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A MOTHER'S Ideals 



A Kindergarten Mother's Conception of Family Life 



/ 



ANDREA HOFER PROUDFOOT 

Editor Volumes iii-viii of "Kindergarten Magazine;" Editor 
OF "Child-Garden;" Author of "Child's Christ- 
Tales," ETC. 




CHICAGO 

published by the AUTHOR 

1,400 AUDITORIUM 



TWO COMES KEGclV 



LB//67 



c;OPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
ANDREA HOFER PROUDFOOT 



To 

/fig /IRotber 

WJio has beeyi preserved to the simplicities of life 
through having child companions ; -whose duty to- 
zi'ard the home has keft her from fursuiiig school- 
ishness; zvho has studied more deeply into the 
affections than i7tto psychology ; ayid zvho loves 
hamanity because it has been given an impulse 
onzvard through hei' as a channel, and an impulse 
upward through Jier spiritual striving for her 
children. 



• ' But Ma7'y ke^t all these things and 
pondered them in her heart' 

The nursery ivas my university, 

—FRIEDRICH FROEBEL, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 


Introduction .... 


PAGE. 

9 


I. 


The New Family 


21 


II. 


The Immaculate Conception 


37 


III. 


The Annunciation 


47 


IV. 


The Story of Life 


• 63 


V. 


The Child in Our Midst 


79 


VI. 


The Radiant Mother 


. 89 


VII. 


Child Rearing 


103 


VIII. 


The Question of Punishment 


121 


IX. 


A Kindergarten Home 


133 


X. 


Love Thy Brother 


• 151 


XI. 


Marriage Ideals 


165 


XII. 


A Wife's Problems . , , 


. 183 


XIII. 


Woman as a Former, Not a Reformer 


199 


XIV. 


Professional Motherhood 


. 213 


XV. 


Woman and Work 


229 


XVI. 


Child Study .... 


■ 245 


XVII. 


A Reading Course 


257 



INTRODUCTION. 

The following letter came to me as editor of the 
Kindergarten Magazine : 

*'You must help us to secure a book for mothers 
who are interested in ideal life. I have been at the 
Chautauqua Summer Assembly for several years, and 
while I answered a thousand questions a day, I felt the 
need of putting such printed matter into the hands of 
earnest women as shall help them know the true doc- 
trine and do the work also. We need a book that is 
not too technical and yet gives practical insight to the 
uninitiated in the true motives of motherhood — in the 
bearing as well as in the raising of their children. 
Will you not help us?" 

Hundreds of letters come every year from the 
mothers themselves, asking, What is this science of 
right living we hear so much about? What is this 
larger duty in which we seem to fail? 

On all sides mothers are being advised and argued 
with by kindergartners and teachers as to their broader 
duties. Feeding and dressing the little ones are no 
longer considered the highest duty of the home. The 
world at large and the mothers themselves are begin- 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

ning to realize that the first few years have in them the 
greatest of all opportunities to start the child right in 
character, heart, mind and body. 

It is told that Darwin said to a mother who ques- 
tioned him as to when she should begin the education 
of her child, then two and a half years old, "Madam, 
you have already lost two and a half years." 

As we study the child we find that there is no rude 
beginning anywhere to any of its faculties, and there 
is a growing demand for a book which shall lead 
mothers to watch over these unseen beginnings, and 
at the same time help them in all their undertakings 
toward the family that they may work for true devel- 
opment. Such a book must primarily deal with 
"ideals." The bread-and-butter question is not the 
only one; the spiritual bread is half the question of 
sustenance. Mothers who try to live and rear their 
children by "bread alone" are numerous, and this is 
why so many women have such huge problems. 

Mahomet has said, "Had I two loaves I would sell 
one and buy hyacinths to feed my soul." 

I hope I may be able to give mothers some of this 
beautiful bread in these pages, for I believe that a 
mother's book not based on ideals had better be left 
unwritten. There are plenty of them, and they are 
constantly lowering the standards of womanhood and 
should be condemned. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

Many books on motherhood dictate what to do and 
what not to do in rearing a family. In these pages I 
shall not attempt to lay down a law for mothers, but 
shall strive constantly so to speak as to make the 
doing of whatever your hands find to do easier and 
more definite in its purpose toward more ideal life. 

This book is not a scholarly attempt, but is poured 
out of my everyday life with all its manifold duties and 
struggles, and I trust it m.ay pour itself into the every- 
day lives of my mother friends, who need books much 
less than they need living words, help and inspira- 
tion. 

To begin with, let me say that anyone who takes the 
pains to read these pages is supposed to be deeply in- 
terested in finding help from the ideals given; and if 
few world-accepted doctrines and no guidance of a 
materialistic order are found, do not complain, dear 
reader. Every word is written to stimulate and en- 
courage the mother in her aspirations and higher life. 
Those searching for remedies and quackery had better 
close the covers at once and vote the book a failure. 

I believe there is a growing demand among mothers 
for such a book, based on the practical demonstra- 
tions of the writer as a mother. It must be radical 
and yet not radical. We need radical changes to carry 
into effect our ideals, and bring about new ways of 
living and thinking; yet these changes need be only 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

a different view-point from which to reach out. The 
same old-fashioned sweet mother-love and father-love 
must always be the one foundation upon which we can 
build permanently for ideal family life. 

These passages will naturally run into the questions 
which mothers are most anxiously putting; and be- 
cause they seem to be the more fully concerned with the 
conservation and perfecting of the family, this may 
truly bear the stamp of a "mother's book." Mother 
literature is, in truth, rare, the past having imposed 
upon the mother class scarcely anything save physi- 
cians' diagnoses of disease and abnormal life condi- 
tions. The mother is usually addressed purely as a 
domestic, one whose all-important duties are the feed- 
ing, clothing and dosing of her children. It is taken 
for granted that their spiritual life and education are 
not particularly hers, but the duties of the church and 
school. 

We must have a newer and higher literature for our 
family builder. We all honestly believe that the ma- 
jority of this race, in spite of its abuses, has more 
faculties to develop than disease to cure. 

The mother's opportunities are constant; growth in 
mind and body will go on in her children whether she 
cares or not. A normal child is learning during every 
waking hour, and the question is. Shall the mother put 
herself intelligently to work and make the years in 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

which she has sole charge the beautiful beginning of 
all that is lasting and progressive in the child? 

I would herein call mothers to consider this special 
period in their own and their children's lives — those 
sweet days when nothing comes between them, and 
when the ties that bind forever are being formed. Do 
we half realize, dear mothers, how sacred are those 
hours when not only their bones and sinews are yield- 
ing, but when the heart and mind are as fully re- 
sponsive to the ''spirit touch"? When we have our 
children in our own hands we must be honest with 
ourselves and ask. Are they wise, unselfish hands? 
Are they perhaps serving only the body, or are they 
also waiting on the soul? 

The mother who has her own children in her own 
care is the m^other who, with intelligence, can do the 
most for the race. And to these common mothers I 
would speak; to those who are not occupied in the 
constant work of reform, on the one hand (the ''con- 
vention women'' so called), nor yet those struggling 
toward the highest social functions; but to the stay-at- 
home, ambitious mothers, with neither poverty nor 
ignorance to struggle against, but with hands full of 
family and child problems — to these we must look 
for the construction work. And to these I write, I 
trust with a pen sharpened by sufficient experience 
in the commonplace problem of the home, and enough 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

inspired with the true light to be indeed practical in 
its ideality. 

The great Froebel says from out the motherly- 
depths of his heart: ''Women are to recognize that 
childhood and womanliness (the care of childhood and 
the life of women) are inseparably connected; that 
they form a unity, and that God and nature have 
placed the protection of the human plant in their 
hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a 
more or less passive part in human history, because 
great battles and the political organizations of nations 
were not suited to its powers. But at the present 
stage of culture nothing is more pressingly required 
than the cultivation of every human power for the arts 
of peace and the work of higher civilization. The 
culture of individuals, and therefore of the whole na- 
tion, depends in great part upon the earliest care of 
childhood. On that account women, as one-half of 
mankind, have to undertake the most important part 
of the problems of the times — problems that men are 
not able to solve. If but one-half of the work be ac- 
complished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail 
to reach the appointed goal. As educators of man- 
kind the women of the present time have the highest 
duties to perform, while hitherto they have been 
scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human 
beings." 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

Mothers, copy the above saHent paragraph and pin 
it up before your eyes to be read every day. See if you 
are doing your individual share, fighting your "bat- 
lies" every day and hour in the nursery, and speaking 
out the right word among your acquaintances. 

Who shall take hold of our social quandary? Who 
shall put a foundation beneath the race structure? 
Walt Whitman answers, "The beloved mothers of 
large families." 

To these I, too, would speak; not, however, to 
mothers who give their children culture through 
hirelings, but to those who, guided by their hearts' 
insight, would cooperate with the great work of kinder- 
garten and school for the sake of the common child- 
hood about them. Such mothers, perm.anently or- 
ganized, would form a working army of salvation, pro- 
ducing their own recruits, before whom every enemy 
would fall. 

The question of children's rights and mothers' 
rights is to me much more fundamental than is the 
question of woman's civil rights. The mother will 
always have higher conditions to meet than the ballot 
ever touches. She must first find for herself freedom 
from disease and suffering through right living, 
through right dressing, through right thinking. She 
above every other needs a sound mind and body. 
She must help to bring in, through her own children, 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

ihe higher forms of the inner government through giv- 
ing them self-control. She must help to institute the 
truer church of the heart, and it is hers to demand 
that the schools shall be schools of character, not of 
brains alone. 

These are the mother's great opportunities, because 
she cradles the world in her hands of love, and leads 
it by the heart through her spiritual discernment. She 
must keep the youth garden blooming, that some day 
the social desert may blossom as a rose; and then she 
need not demand the civil rights. They will be hers as 
a free gift. 

The problems of the social world will always be the 
mother's special duty. She should, as her grand 
right, shoulder them and make herself responsible for 
them. Natural conditions visit this on a woman, 
often seeming to wrong her; but she is only wronged 
in her inadequacy to master her own problems. And 
she must master spiritually; the world has tried every 
other method and failed. 

How many of us are carrying out the ideals dreamed 
of and promised ourselves in youth? 

How many of us have just what our hearts desire in 
happiness and possessions? 

How many of us are doing our full share toward 
perfect neighborhood conditions? 

How many of us can work just a little more to make 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

life sweeter and better through the precious legacy of 
our children? 

Then let us be at it and search without ceasing, that 
we may find the right way. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE "NEW FAMILY." 



"Only the quiet, secluded sanctuary of the family 
can give back to us the welfare of mankind. 

"In the foundation of every new family, the heavenly 
Father, eternally working out the welfare of the 
human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has 
opened In the heart of its founders. 

"With the beginning of every new family there is 
issued to mankind and to each individual human being, 
the call to represent humanity in pure development; to 
represent man in his ideal perfection." — Froebel. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE "NEW FAMILY." 

As we read the inspired words of Froebel they come 
home to us as being most heartily meant, and directed 
to each one individually. When we study his words, 
and remember that he gave his whole life to the work 
of ideal education, we feel moved to do at least our 
little share toward our own children that the world 
may be the better; and we are stirred anew to realize 
for our own home circle the ideal family life. It is 
the heart's desire of every parent to be worthy, and to 
give his or her children the best. 

Froebel helps us to raise our standards of family and 
home higher and ever higher, and also to know what 
is this "best" we so crave for our children. 

He gives us such blessed fullness in the words at 
the head of this chapter. Let us take up these sen- 
tences of Froebel one by one. Read the first one very 
carefully. Do you believe it? Are you consciously 
working through your family life for the welfare of 
mankind? Do you realize that each one that escapes 
from your hands out into the world is adding either to 

31 



22 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

its good or its burden, to its joy or its sorrow? Is 
your home a quiet, secluded sanctuary where you re- 
hgiously watch over each budding energy, feehng and 
habit? 

Is there a wise, watchful, loving cooperation at the 
head? Is every day being joined with every other day 
in constancy and patient devotion? Is each child 
asked to give out and help and respond, or are you 
doing it all and complaining because of lack of appre- 
ciation and recognition? Are you cramming your 
children with material good things because you have 
plenty, or are you wisely and truly giving them just 
the necessary, and spending the rest of your energy on 
the cultivation of the character? How many a rich 
man spoils his sons and then disinherits them as un- 
worthy! Are you adding your children to the world 
as added problems, or are you helping them into that 
liberation which shall bring liberation to others? Are 
you, in a word, realizing that the home should be a 
sanctuary which shall give back to us the welfare of 
mankind — give back peace to humanity which to-day 
seems everywhere to be so sick at heart? 

Take the second sentence: "In the foundation of 
every new family the heavenly Father, eternally work- 
ing out the welfare of the human race, speaks to man 
through the heaven he has opened in the heart of its 
founders." 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 23 

Think of a home founded on the conviction that it 
has its work to do for the whole race; where two hearts 
join that the heavens may open to the race. Think of 
the home already founded that receives the sweet in- 
spiration all over again and its founders determine 
anew to open their hearts and refresh their efforts 
toward ideal life for the sake not only of their own 
children, but to make their large social circle a garden 
spot of blossom and fruit. Blessed are the father and 
mother who find it never too late to begin over. How 
many of us know just such families, where the father 
and mother always appear to be newly married, and 
whose children seem but their playfellows? To retain 
this spirit is certainly a great stride toward living the 
perfect life. 

Froebel holds the family forever as the ideal funda- 
mental fact of all human social existence. How he 
loved the sweet words — "family," ''father," "mother" 
and child!" He fairly makes them sing as he speaks 
them, so full are they of prophecy and joy. He saw 
in these three relationships the constant embodiment 
of the trinity of God and the expression of his oneness. 

The word "family" means sanctuary to Froebel al- 
ways; the place where we join together in unity to find 
God — heaven. Not a place in which to sing psalms 
and make long prayers, but a beautiful center of action 
from which each may consciously reach out; reach with 



24 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

helpfulness into each life, and with loving kindness 
practice the everyday small virtues. 

The word ''father" means the provider, the pre- 
server; the lover of the family and the race. The 
father was to symbolize to his children the higher rela- 
tionship, and make God a reality to them easily under- 
stood, because the human father embodied divine 
qualities. And how universally children consider 
their fathers all-wise and all-powerful. How often we 
hear from children's lips, "My papa knows every- 
thing;" or, "There's nothing my papa can't do." If 
fathers would only aspire to be what their children 
believe them! 

And the word "mother" — who can attempt to define 
what Froebel makes it include? Here are his words: 
"The mothers of humanity * * =5« as the first Mary 
brought up the Saviour of the world." He saw the 
mother in the constant attitude of bringing us the 
Christ, "the perpetual Messiah" whether in person or 
in principle. 

He found motherhood a universal relationship, and 
understanding this relationship was to know the won- 
der of nature and the wonder of spirit. He declared 
the lowliest woman to contain its whole majesty and 
power if she but knew it. He showed it to be some- 
thing which we can all feel but hardly tell, and which 
is, in a silent way, told only by the lips of the heart. 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 25 

We find it expressed in the words of the poet when he 
says to women: 

"You are the gates of the body 
And you are the gates of the soul." 

And "child," that word which makes up the greatest 
third in the "New Family," was the burden of all 
Froebel's work and thought. Hear what he says: 
"A child ought to be considered a complete being dur- 
ing every period of life." "Originally the child is at 
unity with mankind and with God." What sweet 
promises he saw in each and every child! He always 
speaks of it as "the child of God," and the "son of 
man." 

Though his benign head was ever above the clouds, 
how thoroughly crowned was it with practicality ! For 
he set to work to give this blessed "new family" the 
most potent help and the most organically arranged 
scheme by which it could proceed to fill its divine call. 
This scheme he called the kindergarten. 

These great thoughts of Froebel blossom into our 
minds especially as we hang over his precious picture 
book, the "Mother Play"; from the first page to the 
last we are given the gems of his thought and word, 
the mother surrendering herself to her child in joyous 
care and play; the child surrendering itself in full com- 
munion and cooperation to the whole, in self-forget- 



26 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

fulness and returned affection; the father representing, 
as he does, the big world, surrendering himself to the 
whole good — the united work of the united families. 

Miss Blow says: "What Froebel saw in the heart 
of the child he has told us in the 'Mother Play.' In 
this precious volume he 'deciphers all that the child 
feels in cipher,' and translates for mothers the hiero- 
glyphic of their own instinctive play. As a child's 
book this little collection of songs and games is unique 
in Hterature. As a mother's book, likewise, it has no 
ancestry and no posterity. It is the greatest book for 
little children and the greatest book for mothers in 
the world. When all women shall have laid to heart 
its lessons, the ideal which hovers before us in the im- 
mortal pictures of the Madonna will be realized; for 
then, at last, each mother will revere and nurture in 
her child the divine humanity." 

If only we would study Froebel more with our eyes 
shut and our hearts open, and comprehend his words 
not through our ears but through our lives! If we 
strive to touch him with half the reverent touch he 
gives to all things, how different would be the great 
work that has already emanated from his presence into 
this era — namely, the kindergarten. Oh, for love and 
activity enough to understand him in his thousands of 
wonderful words, a few of which we wish to show 
forth in these pages! 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 27 

He shows us how futile is all building or culture un- 
less it build with and for the family. 

He warns us that any institution that does not take 
into consideration the meanest hovel that struggles to 
stand for home and childhood is useless. 

He feels that rotten indeed is that law which sets up 
the rights of property, or anything, above the poorest 
waif and his claims to protection and home. 

He proves how poverty stricken is that government 
that does not center all its motives round the self- 
governing family, and take every step to preserve and 
foster such in its highest ideal. The freedom of any 
nation depends upon how many such families it can 
entertain. 

The family, that sweet relationship established by 
Life itself, how sacred is it to Froebel above all else! 
He declares that no institution that does not take 
upon itself the nature of a family can stand, and that 
the educational system which does not work for the 
perfecting of family life is worse than useless. 

In considering ideal family life we must, first of all, 
have a clear idea of the relationships involved in 
motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Motherhood 
or fatherhood is never a personal thing. When we 
find it personal it is all pain. It is as universal as the 
sunlight, expressing through all life its every idea. It 
belongs to every phase of the universe. Our great 



28 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

lesson to learn is to find our parenthood always in 
the universal, and to keep it there; keep it with God. 

Motherhood is yours and mine only when we see 
it as this universal thing. In order to find it truly, we 
must first lose it personally. When we find ourselves 
in the universal motherhood, not only of human na- 
ture, but of common nature, then alone can we give 
our children their real inheritance and truly be 
mothers. We must see our children as belonging to 
the larger family and responsible to the divine par- 
entage. Even the common laws of the land refuse 
parents' rights over the children when those rights 
claim an interference with the good of each and all. 

I know one mother who thought she was keeping 
her children too close and loving them too hard and 
making home too perfect for them. She never wanted 
them to go from her, and always thought other young 
people were not good enough to associate with hers. 
Being urged by her husband to take a rest, she at- 
tended a convention many hundred miles from home 
and was astonished to have one of the children write 
what a good time they were having; papa let them do 
what they pleased. It distressed her very much to 
think they could do without her so easily when she 
had felt so heavily their dependence upon her. It set 
her to thinking, and she came home a much wiser 
woman and mother. From that time on she has 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 29 

studied to set her children free and has been one of 
the most progressive of mothers. She is to-day prom- 
inent in the larger work for the education and good of 
the universal child. How many mothers do not learn 
this lesson soon enough, and their birds fly from the 
nest as from a prison house! 

Froebel teaches us that we must begin at home in 
making definite these universal relations. We must 
learn to take a broader view of life and be interested 
in and work for a larger interest than just our own 
blood. If we are not willing to reach out into our 
higher and broader self and source, and into an un- 
selfish work for the good of humanity, we can never 
expect our children to expand to the full wealth of 
expression of which God made them capable. 

Jesus as a man sought to be honest to himself; and 
believed in himself as a son of God, derived from God, 
and he ever remained firm to his divine conviction. 
He preached God as the father of all mankind and man 
as the child of God, and all men as his brethren, and he 
himself responsible for each. This is our aim if we 
are Christians in fact. He taught that we were to be 
true to our inheritance, our God-derived nature, and 
to realize it for everyone; thus he declared the heav- 
enly brotherhood. This is the deepest fundamental 
principle of Christianity. It is the principle under- 
lying ideal family life and is the foundation of all 



30 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Froebel teaches. And we are never able to reach ideal 
life for our children until we reach out beyond self- 
interest. 

Tolstoi gives us a version of the Bible and the say- 
ings of Jesus which very simply brings out these 
spiritual relationships. It is called "The Gospel in 
Brief," and I should recommend it to every mother, 
for he makes practical application of each deep truth 
to our common experiences, and takes away the words 
which too often fall on the ear as tinkling cymbals, 
when they are really golden symbolisms. 

Chapter five of the ''Education of Man," on Reli- 
gion, gives a most complete picture of the spiritual 
relationship of parent and child. As mothers with this 
sacred opportunity to build for the real kingdom of 
God which is within, we should read all these things. 

Each sentence of Froebel's is a volume in itself, as 
it gushes out of the heart of the warmest lover of 
humanity the nineteenth century has entertained. 

What a bridal greeting there is to each one of us in 
the words of the third paragraph at the head of this 
chapter. In reality the opportunity is always with us 
to live the new life and aspire to the "new family," if 
we but hear this call "to represent humanity in pure 
development and ideal perfection." 

Here is a letter from a mother of a "new family" 
who certainly has probed beneath the shell of things; 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 31 

and surely she will be led on and on by her children to 
the heights that are beyond. It so fully expresses the 
inspiration she has received that I cannot refrain from 
giving it, and trust it may inspire others to take up the 
search. 

"1 have been a student of Froebel for five years, and 
have surely been a most hungry spiritual searcher for 
more light, since I have so many little ones who are 
dependent upon me to be fed aright. Through this 
reading there has come to my inner eye a flash of light 
so clear and distinct that it illuminates every line to 
my dull sight, so that frequently when I fail to under- 
stand the meaning fully I am still inspired to work on. 
I wish now to know whether this power which I so 
distinctly feel is embodied in the peculiar psychology 
of Froebel; or it is because of the personal convictions 
of those who write about him? 

"I find myself fed and strengthened in spite of the 
fact that I am no kindergartner. It is certainly more 
than a new method which occasions the light which 
I discern. 

'T have thought much on this subject and cannot 
believe but that it is a universal privilege for every 
human heart to understand these things, and that it is 
something broader than a so-called kindergarten 
philosophy. I have heard this quality called the spirit- 
ual psychology of the kindergarten as distinguished 



32 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

from the material psychology, which I studied, but 
which did not inspire me. 

"If only all motherhood could get down to a sincere 
study of that something which I am sure inspires the 
inner and outer life of this great movement! There 
seems to be the greatest promise of the millennium in 
it — greater than anything else I know of. Whenever 
I have met kindergartners and mothers who know any- 
thing about the work, I find them fairly aglow with 
interest. Some of them speak as if they had passed 
through a conversion or change of heart. I have 
watched several young women change from day to day 
while in the study which prepares them for kinder- 
garten work, and have witnessed the mellowing of 
their characters." 

Here is a mother who evidently is already building 
one of Froebel's "new families." She has caught 
from him a peculiar vivid light, a ray of joyous intelli- 
gence which she finds hard to describe, but it is to her 
the most real of realities. Words of advice were to 
her indeed idle. The ideal which has thus vaguely 
taken hold of her will grow more and more definite as 
she lives out the myriad everyday problems of life with 
her children and searches to ideally solve them. No 
matter what she reads or studies, she has her guiding 
star of promise that will lead her to the truth. 

A certain conversion comes over one upon reading 



THE "NEW FAMILY." 33 

Froebel which I wish each one of my mother friends 
might experience. If you have not read Froebel's 
own writings you have still before you one of the 
most delightful and broadening experiences. It is 
not light reading, however, and, like the Bible, may 
be read with profit every day of your lives. 

Will you not read Froebel and be a "new woman" 
and help add one more of these beautiful ''new 
famihes" to this "new world" of ours? No matter 
where you are, in the middle or at the beginning of 
your family building, Froebel will lend to you the 
regenerating power with which you may make your 
work the perfect one. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 



"With reference to his eternal immortal soul, every 
human being should be viewed and treated as a mani- 
festation of the Divine Spirit in human form; as a 
pledge of the love, the nearness, the grace of God; as 
a gift of God. Indeed, the early Christians viewed 
their children in this light, as is shown by the names 
they gave them. 

''Even as a child every human being should be 
viewed and treated as a necessary, essential member 
of humanity; and therefore, as guardians, parents are 
responsible to God, to the child, and to humanity." — 
Froebel. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 

At a meeting of some half dozen mothers during a 
recent winter we were looking at some of the pictures 
of the Immaculate Conception by the old masters, and 
we found ourselves slipping into some very deep sub- 
jects. Each individual mother, if she had never 
thought seriously before, found how many a problem 
she was stumbling over. 

We read in the Apocrypha of the New Testament 
the story of the simple, holy lives of the parents of the 
mother of Jesus. She was conceived without sin. It 
is fromx these uncanonical writings that the Roman 
church has promulgated the doctrine of the Immacu- 
late Conception, which refers entirely to the conditions 
under which the mother herself was conceived. It 
was not a miraculous conception, but an immaculate 
one. To realize purity and perfection is perhaps the 
only miracle. 

The great artist Giotto has made of this subject the 
frescoes on the cloister walls of the church of vSanta 
Maria Novella, in Florence. The angels are repre- 

37 



38 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

vSented as rejoicing that a man and woman are found 
united in marriage who have consciously determined 
to conceive a child after the desire of the spirit only. 
Hence the immaculate conception of the Christ. This 
is a favorite subject of the old masters. They have 
painted Anna, the mother of Mary, surrounded by 
angelic children, who rejoice that one of their number 
can find, through her, a pure avenue into life. 

Thus the saintly old painters give us a premonition 
of Froebel's divine idea, which teaches us that all little 
children should be reconceived of and given the spirit- 
ual avenues into life, full of activity and great deeds; 
and he looks to mothers and kindergartners to see this 
perfect image in each child, call it forth, bring it into 
self-recognition, and make it the motive power in each 
life. 

I wish I might repeat the whole story of that 
mothers' meeting — how they were startled at being 
asked to accept God as the actual father, and how for 
the first time the daylight of spiritual causes flashed 
upon the loving women. Spiritual consciousness al- 
ways seems to come with a flash, and these eager 
mothers realized what shockingly low ideals are usu- 
ally given women to begin building homes upon. 
Every one of them was more conversant with the 
motley lore of materialism, and the condemnation of 
marriage and child-bearing, than with the sweet truths 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 39 

of the spiritual nature and the sanctity of the family. 
God was an unreal abstraction to most of them ; Love 
meant hardly anything but personal attraction, and we 
had to begin like little children. 

To be asked to look at the story of the Immaculate 
Conception as the real story of life and birth, and to 
actually carry it into their homes and domestic rela- 
tions, seemed hard for these mothers to accept, but 
just what they had come together to be told; for they 
had demanded practical help in everyday illumination 
of the home, and nothing will illuminate it so quickly 
as to find how related is family life to God. Froebel 
says: "It is the destiny and life work of the family to 
unfold the divine unity to reveal God." 

Is it not sweet to think that we should tell a story 
of immaculate conception for every child? 

If we accept God as the good Father of all we must 
believe that childhood is of the Spirit. Christianity 
teaches us that the Spirit of God among us is all there 
is of Life, all there is to our real being. We are of 
God. 

One mother of some very clever boys of twelve 
and fourteen asked: "How about teaching my boys 
the source of life?" It was rather late for her to be- 
gin to teach this wonder of heaven and earth, and in 
answering I told her how I began with my firstborn. 
I told her of God, the spiritual Father, before she was 



40 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

here. To her parents' consciousness she has always 
been only the precious, God-given charge, for whom 
we must strive to live perfectly, and search to find the 
truth in all things. The first occasion for bringing 
the thought to her was upon the coming of the second 
one. This sweet little girl was so full of love that she 
could understand anything. We told her wonderful 
stories of the baby coming, and though scarcely a year 
old she would toddle to the window and watch for 
*'baa-baa." 

She began to take great interest in dolls; every- 
thing was a doll. She seemed to comprehend that 
the doll was a parallel life to her own which she must 
care for and foster. The first time she saw a doll she 
knew what it was, and took it into her arms to love. 
She would lay its cheek against hers and sway to and 
fro and sing ''baa-baa"; then she would give it to 
mamma and mamma would answer, "Baa-baa is com- 
ing soon." And when "baa-baa" did come she was 
expected, and received into the holiest sanctuary of 
love — a little sister's heart. 

"But," proceeded the questioning mother, "how will 
you continue from year to year? Tell us in just so 
many words." 

My dear friend, how can the words help you unless 
you yourself endeavor to find the spiritual conscious- 
ness back of them, and endeavor to abide in it? If you 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 41 

will take the simplest thought and practice it you will 
learn more than I can tell you. Could you, day after 
day, hold your children in the reverent thought that 
they came to you from the hand of God — Love — and 
stick to it, no matter what seems to contradict it? 
Can you love every phase of life and see it environed 
in the spiritual only? Can you see God as the only 
excuse for the existence not only of yourself and fam- 
ily, but of the whole world? If I told you, what would 
the dead letter of advice be to you? What good 
would it do if you yourself did not feel and under- 
stand? Do not most mothers use God as an easy ex- 
cuse for unexplainable things? Many a woman has 
told me that when she told her children that God 
brought the babies she felt that she was lying to them. 
We are usually told originally that God is the great 
author of all, and then, perchance, we unfortunately 
unlearn the sweet reason. But not until it is learned 
over again do we really know our source and have 
heart-satisfaction that life is not a mockery reeking 
with filth and crime. If mothers realized the awful- 
ness of this sickening experience, they would hasten 
to tell their children the beautiful, spiritual explana- 
tion of life. If they would begin young enough, there 
would never be a hard place, and if they would elevate 
their thought sufficiently, there would never be any- 
thing too delicate to tell. 



42 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Emerson says: ''Even children are not deceived by 
the false reasons which their parents give in answer 
to their questions, whether touching natural facts, or 
religion, or persons. When the parent, instead of 
thinking how it really is, puts them off with a tradi- 
tional or hypocritical answer, the children perceive that 
it is traditional or hypocritical." 

Some one asks: "Of what special worth are the 
common prescriptions, using the symbols of flowers in 
teaching children of the source of life?" 

Why is not the creature, made in the image and like- 
ness of God, pure enough to use as an example? Man 
is so precious and life is so precious, why take other 
things to pieces in order to show our source? In 
order to find life we must begin with God. When 
we know our own source as spiritual, then we know all 
things, and we know the source of the flowers too. 
Do we not immediately misinterpret man and suggest 
evil, if we show his source by using other things sup- 
posedly more delicate, higher and purer? God is 
man's source, not personality, and neither eye nor ear 
can know God, for he is the supreme Law and Truth. 
Some of the first paragraphs of Froebel's ''Education 
of Man" make these meanings most clear, and think- 
ing Christian parents should read him devoutly. 

I hear a mother ask, "But how can I arrive at this 
beautiful conception? How can I find this uplifting 



THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 43 

power, so beneficial to my family and the whole world?'* 
Would you honestly know, gentle mother? Would 
you truly make of yourself the actual spiritual creature 
God must have intended, since he has intrusted you 
with a child? 

Are you willing to systematically go to work like 
a new woman? Are you willing to begin right where 
you are, no matter what your problems seem to be, 
whether your children are little, or big, or still un- 
born? Are you ready to watch your every thought, 
and never again think cheaply of yourself or of a sin- 
gle duty, and try and see life as a costly God-derived 
gift? Are you ready to see your own children in the 
sight of God, made in his image and likeness, having 
the seed of the divine within for you to nurture? And, 
also, are you ready to see every other one as having 
come from God, "trailing clouds of glory"? Are you 
willing to render a friendship that shall find only vir- 
tues, and help each to find his own genius, "taking its 
rise out of the mountains of righteousness"? Are 
you ready to help every brother and sister to no longer 
covet power and beauty, but to possess them both as 
the pillars of their individuality? 

To know and live are dictated of our spiritual con- 
sciousness. If I told you, perhaps you would hardly 
believe the conditions of, and problems which have 
been solved in, some homes that I know; it would 



44 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

take volumes to tell you, but out of it all has come 
this talk, inspired, as I trust you will feel it, by my love 
for all sweet mothers, friends, and homes. The doors 
of God's families are all wide open, because with God 
as the only excuse there are no deep secrets. 

The questioning mother continued: "You answer 
so many questions in one; I had thought to ask a great 
many different rules and regulations, but I see I must 
begin at the source with you and answer my own 
questions." 

Love those of your own every day more and more, 
and they will believe the highest secrets you dare tell 
them. Present the perfect harmony of everyday life 
to your husband and children, and they will know what 
you mean by God. We are demonstrating what Love 
is to our friends only when we present ourselves har- 
monious to them. It is a matter of seeing clearly our- 
selves, and being active in love every day and hour. 

If God is to be our Father, we must begin by being 
true fathers and mothers to our children. We may 
presume to have insight into divine things, and yet if 
we neglect as unworthy of notice the common rela- 
tions we lose the key to the divine. As parents, we 
must administer the priestly office at home by our 
daily life with our children, and the home will be the 
center, the holy of holies of that beautiful kingdom 
which we are taught to build upon earth. 



CHAPTER III. 
THE ANNUNCIATION. 



"All that parents should do before and after the an- 
nunciation follows readily, clearly, and unmistakably 
— to be pure and true in word and deed; to be filled 
and penetrated with the worth and dignity of man; 
to look upon themselves as the keepers and guardians 
of a gift of God; to inform themselves concerning the 
mission and destiny of man as well as concerning the 
ways and means of their fulfillment. Now the destiny 
of a child as such is to harmonize in his development 
and culture the nature of his parents, the fatherly and 
motherly character, their intellectual and emotional 
drift, which, indeed, may lie as yet dormant in both of 
them, as mere tendencies and energies. Thus, too, 
the destiny of man as a child of God and of nature is 
to represent in harmony and unison the spirit of God 
and of nature, the natural and the divine, the terrestrial 
and the celestial, the finite and infinite. Again, the des- 
tiny of a child as a member of the family is to unfold 
and represent the nature of the family, its spiritual ten- 
dencies and forces, in their harmony, allsidedness, and 
purity; and, similarly, it is the destiny and mission of 
man, as a member of humanity, to unfold and repre- 
sent the nature, the tendencies and forces of humanity 
as a whole" — Froebel. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ANNUNCIATION. 

There is no sweeter moment in the life of the true, 
loving woman, than when she becomes conscious for 
the first time that she has received the gift of all gifts. 
We are given a beautiful picture in the first chapter 
of Tuke of the fervent joy of the mother of Jesus. 
And every devout woman's soul does indeed "mag- 
nify the Lord." When this consciousness of new life 
dawns on the true woman, it comes with a joy that 
''angels might share." And there is one indeed who 
shares it with her if she has cultivated the best friend 
in all the world to every woman — her husband. What 
a renewed birth it is to them to come into the blessed 
unity of motherhood and fatherhood! 

The mother and father who start out with the 
heart's desire to make a complete home and family 
must believe absolutely, to start with, that their great 
responsibility is but a great resource and blessing, 
never a burden, and always a joy. And they will, 
upon the annunciation of an angel in their midst, set 
about putting their house in order anew, and regulat- 

47 



48 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

ing their everyday lives that they may better receive 
and entertain their royal guest. 

Long before the mother is conscious of the body 
of her child she is conscious of it in mind, and has in 
her thought the beautiful image of her holy child. 
These first months are her wonderful opportunity to 
liberate and bless her little one, and she cannot hold 
her thought too high and free. It is a serious matter 
what she is thinking at this time especially. 

When we realize that each child will be either a bless- 
ing or a problem to the whole race it behooves 
mothers, if it cost every effort, to control their thoughts 
and feelings. I wish every mother might have heard 
the address of Prof. Elmer Gates, of Chevy Chase, 
Md., given to the Mothers' Congress in Washington 
in February, 1897. I quote some of the facts he cites 
from scientific demonstration, showing the direct in- 
fluence of the mind over the body, and the parent's 
awful obligation to the child before birth. After giv- 
ing many experiments and relating many incidents 
from actual experience he sums it up thus: 

"The evil and painful emotions create in a very few 
minutes poisonous chemical products in the fluids of 
the body. Thus, anger produces a different poison 
than fear, and sorrow a still different product; and all 
of the evil and the depressing emotions produce kata- 
bolic and poisonous products which lower the tide of 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 49 

life, while the good and pleasurable and sublime emo- 
tions create in the blood and within the cellular sub- 
stances of the body a series of anabolic and nutritiye 
products, which augment every physiologic and 
psychologic function. Now it can be shown that these 
products of the evil emotions interfere with the rate 
and completeness of cellular development by retarda- 
tion and by the production of various abnormalities, 
while the anabolic products promote normal cellular 
growth. Thus I found that the rate of cellular multi- 
plication in lower organisms — that is, the frequency of 
cellular segmentation within a given time — is lessened 
by these poisonous products. 

'The application is this: It is well known that the 
child during the nine months of gestation grows from 
a single cell by cell multiplication to a fully developed 
child, and that during this period at certain times the 
several developments of certain organs commence. 
Thus at a given period the spinal cord commences to 
form; at another period the liver, or the heart, or the 
brain, or a certain part of the brain, and if at the time 
when an organ is just commencing to form the mother 
throws into her blood, through harboring some evil 
emotion, some of these poisonous products, she will 
feed the child with them, and thus arrest the normal 
rate of cell multiplication, and that organ will fail to 
attain normal growth in size and be otherwise vitiated. 



50 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

But if instead of this all of the good emotions are 
dirigated into activity, then the child will get all of 
the normal nutritive products essential to complete 
growth of all its parts. 

''But these emotive products afifect also the sperm 
cell of the male and the egg cell of the female; hence 
the parents should for at least six months or a year 
before creating a child avoid all evil emotions and 
dirigate all good emotions, so that the germ and egg 
may carry to the conceptive process normal structural 
and chemical growth; so that none of the evil emo- 
tions may have distorted the hereditary desirable quali- 
ties, and so that all of the good emotions through their 
nutritive products may have enabled these germ 
plasms to convey the desirable qualities. 

"During these fateful nine months of gestation the 
child ontogenetically repeats the phylogenetic history 
of the evolution of life on earth; it passes through all 
of the stages from the lowest to the highest, and if the 
normal anabolic products only feed it, all these stages 
will be normally completed; but every evil emotion will 
arrest or pervert some of these stages by interfering 
with the rate and character of cell development in the 
child. 

"Bring into daily use all of the happy, good, moral, 
aesthetic, altruistic, sublime, worshipful emotions be- 
fore and during gestation, avoiding absolutely all of 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 51 

the irascible, unhappy, painful, critical, immoral, and 
evil emotions, and you will transmit the better char- 
acteristics to your child just to the extent that you 
have builded their corresponding structures in your 
brain. Have plenty of normal exercise, plenty to eat, 
and plenty of rest and sleep." 

Thus we are pointed to mental causes and effects 
most conclusively by these scientific experiments, and 
they prove to us how all-important is our mood, our 
thought and mental atmosphere in the actual bearing 
of our children. 

The loving, fearless mother is the beautiful channel 
of humanity. When in actual experience the mother 
is really an open channel to her children of all that is 
noble and good, how wonderful indeed is her life! 
The open-hearted consciousness of the loving woman 
about to realize motherhood, when she accepts her 
child as derived from the spiritual source, can hardly 
be described. Hearts made open through open 
thoughts and affections are wonderful mother hearts, 
and such hearts open the doors to every high and val- 
uable characteristic in the child. 

But how shall a woman about to become a mother 
secure these open heart channels? For those of us 
who want recipes here are a few: 

Practice every day upon every little and every large 
occasion, affection and charity toward all. Practice 



52 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

it consciously as you would a lesson on the piano. 
You have no idea how happy, light hearted and well 
it will make you feel. 

Fear nothing. Fear is nothing but obstruction; it 
is hurtful, and how beautifully we can argue it away by 
reassuring ourselves that perfect love and affection 
will cast it all out. Fear is the most terrible enemy 
to motherhood that can be imagined, and it is poison- 
ous to the imagination. Think of how often it is the 
case that a child is brought forth after nine months of 
awful anticipation, anxiety, and black fear; imagine 
such a channel into life, and realize how free born is 
one who has escaped it. Emerson says: 

''Leave me, Fear; thy throbs are base, 
Trembling for the body's sake. 
Come, Love, who dost the spirit raise, 
Because for others thou dost wake." 

Put down the fears and suggested evils of all the 
friends about. To the woman passing through the 
experience for the first time this is hardly necessary 
advice. Her own fears are, if all is free and natural, 
entirely eclipsed by her joy. Be engrossed in delight- 
ful occupation or study if possible. If work and con- 
ditions seem to exclude light-heartedness, command 
yourself, with all the mother-love latent within you, 
to put joy and delight into the commonest necessity, 
lest you poison and obstruct the life of your child. 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 53 

The best rule of all is not to allow yourself or any- 
one else to discuss the condition. Quiety prepare 
yourself for all the exigencies; continue in all your 
wonted duties up to the full need and to the last. Do 
not read quack books or listen to idle talk, and trust 
only your best friends, your ideally thinking friends, 
with your confidences and for advice. 

About making the clothes: make them in the sim- 
plest way. Have them beautiful, but supremely sim- 
ple. Think how beautiful and simple is the sweet 
babe who will use them; and the clothes should cer- 
tainly not outshine the pure soul life, the precious gem 
from God's hands. For what is 

'*As sweet as the soul of a babe, bloom-wise. 
Born of a lily in paradise"? 

Weave all the beautiful thoughts you can into the 
garments and into your heart, remembering that such 
thoughts will beautify your child, and give health and 
intelHgence. Better still, if you can possibly afiford it, 
give out the sewing to some one who needs employ- 
ment; it will broaden your sympathies and allow you 
to spend your time to better advantage in study and 
recreation. Think universally of your child; that is, 
hold it in the broadest sense as a new, original creature, 
a part of the great humanity. You are but its channel 
into the world, and the less personal and unselfish you 
can be, the better. Practice giving; go out into your 



54 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

larger neighborhood and do consciously some good 
where it is greatly needed. Remember the deep 
meaning in Christ's words, 'Take no thought of the 
body," and honestly try to live them out by forgetting 
yourself and yours in higher duties. And the father 
must remember that the mother can only do half the 
great duty. He must not worry or question her 
bodily feelings, but constantly and quietly plan for her 
fuller freedom and happiness. 

Let the thoughts be open and high and pure, that 
the whole being may respond to the conditions of the 
mind and be open and strong and pure; let the affec- 
tion play in every direction with hearty activity, and 
let every atom of the self feel perfect activity and in- 
dulge in the highest pursuit. This will help the cir- 
culation of both mind and body. Let life be recog- 
nized as a spiritual thing and be nurtured not only 
through wholesome food, but through wholesome 
ideas. 

Some one has said that the assimilation of truth is 
the perfect food, and what is received into the con- 
sciousness is as important as what is received into the 
stomach. 

Let relaxation be practiced; not only relaxation of 
the body, but relaxation through freedom of mind and 
heart. Do not hold to a single irritating thought. 
Put it out as you would a thief or a murderer. 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 55 

Many a mother as she reads will say, "How beautiful 
a theory, but how impossible for me to live all this!" 
She will immediately see looming up before her the 
insurmountable vision of all her family problems and 
shortcomings; but suppose for once in her Ufe she 
dares to believe that all things are possible to her in 
a perfect life; dares to beHeve it just for the sake of 
the child; dares to believe that the father and her 
children are perfect, and know that they are, at least 
in the sight of God if not in hers; dares to stand up 
and declare each one of the seeming problems void, 
and in its place puts the perfect harmony that the 
heart longs for. Do it, if only in words. Jesus tells 
us that when we ask we are to know we have already 
received. We should declare freedom and truth as 
ever present, and they will come. 

Do we perhaps think that ideal family life costs? 
Yes, indeed it does. It costs energy; it costs absolute 
activity; it costs the sacrifice of all our pet notions 
and pampered thoughts. Ideal life costs the supreme 
price of all — the laying down of self; and if you 
wish to pay less you cannot buy it. It cannot be had 
at a bargain. 

Froebel says: 'The most original element of the 
woman's soul is maternal love [it is the womb of the 
spiritual life], which at no stage of development and 
in no decline of the human race can belie the stamp 



56 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

of the holiest nature." And this natural element in the 
mother will help her, when she knows the conse- 
quence, to control herself and make right conditions 
for her unborn child. 

Motherhood is the possession of the universe, and 
we are only the channels. If we see motherhood as 
personal possession, then what? The Bible says, it is 
full of sorrow. If we see it as merely physical, then 
what? We might as well be only a higher domestic 
animal. 

If we would receive the fullest blessing of mother- 
hood we must, in passing through conception, go right 
on with the order of the world; not think of self or 
body, but see our child as planted in the universal 
heart of all. 

I know one beautiful mother who through 
straitened circumstances was obliged to face the birth 
of her seventh child without ordinary comforts. She 
took up her task with joy. She had demonstrated 
through it so often it did not seem hard. She knew 
that the more active she could be the better. She 
remodeled the old garments, kept up all her work, 
made her little flock her constant companions and 
helpers, and marshaled into her house a unity, a 
peace and strength that few would be able to equal. 
How many a one can look back and confess, "My 
own mother did this very thing." Such women 
make triflers seem absurd. 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 57 

A mother friend of mine, who has had several chil- 
dren, each time makes for herself a program during 
this period of waiting. She uses a notebook to serve 
as a calendar, dividing it evenly into nine parts with 
about five pages to each part. The first page is the 
general plan of work for each month. The other 
pages are gradually filled up, as the days wear on, with 
helpful ideas and suggestions, recording occurrences 
that have brought her happiness; and gradually more 
and more points are added to the program, suggest- 
ing work and pleasure for the future months. The 
necessary preparations and sewing are parceled out 
between the several divisions of time so that there will 
be no strain, the easiest work being reserved for the 
last. A course of reading is included in the program, 
also the visits and calls she hopes to make and the 
helpful things she desires to do. She plans quite as 
definitely as though she had a school program to make 
and carry out. This same mother has had several 
children, and has kept a diary for herself during the 
whole period, and a record for each child from the time 
of conception. Order and definiteness are this 
woman's marked characteristics, and she is always 
voted "a woman that can be depended upon." It is 
unnecessary to say that her husband fully cooperates 
with her. 

Some of the points in her program repeat them- 



58 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

selves regularly; for instance, the Sunday morning 
walk with her husband, the weekly visit to the kinder- 
garten, certain study of Froebel, etc. 

This same mother has no particularly high ideals, 
but the order and definiteness of her nine months' 
preparation prove to be such a smoothing out of con- 
ditions, that half-formed ideals might carry one to a 
much less practical outcome. She has plenty of time, 
is never hurried, or worried, or worn out. When we 
consciously plan our day we are apt to plan for happi- 
ness, and if so we usually get it. No one ever plans 
for misery and loss, for faith and hope are natural to 
the normal mind. She loves the Bible and finds a 
great thought in the verse, "Other foundation can no 
man lay than that is laid," and she is consciously doing 
her share in the building. 

Indeed, dear mothers, no other foundation can be 
laid than that is laid, both for ourselves and our chil- 
dren; but we, and we alone, are responsible for the 
building. Think what is this building we undertake 
when we enter into parenthood. There are the first 
nine beautiful months when we are responsible for the 
hidden life. Every moment of that is a gradual, con- 
tinuous growth of both mother and child. Shall this 
foundation already laid be looked upon with indiffer- 
ence? Or even worse, shall it be builded with chaff 
and stubble? Or shall it be of gold? 



THE ANNUNCIATION. 59 

Every hour of these nine months should be con- 
secrated not to self-comfort and thought of the body, 
but to higher thoughts and deeds. If the mother 
realized how the wisdom or the mistakes of the all- 
important time after "the annunciation" are bound to 
leave their effects, she would look well to all her do- 
ings. In word and thought and deed, all three, she 
would be lifted by reading Froebel along with her 
Bible. 

Froebel finds the beginnings of all things in mind, 
and asks parents to see to it that their thoughts be 
right. He asks us to recognize God in all things, 
especially in our relationships to each other. He de- 
clared that "from every point, from every object of 
nature and life, there is a way to God." 

He believes that in bringing our children into the 
world we are taught this lesson in the deepest way, by 
having learned the mystery of life through our inter- 
dependence as parents, and are made responsible for 
what our offspring shall be. He would have parents 
be always ready and in the right mind to do fullest 
justice to the little ones which they dare to give the 
world. 

If God is a reality he must be an ever-present reality, 
always present without beginning or end, and our 
children have been forever conceived in the divine 
order. Hear Froebel's own words: 



60 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

"Can you tell, O mother, when the spiritual devel- 
opment of your child begins? Can you trace the 
boundary line which separates the conscious from the 
imconscious soul? In God's world, just because it is 
God's world, the law of all things is continuity; there 
are and can be no abrupt beginnings, no rude transi- 
tions, no to-day which is not based upon yesterday. 
The distant stars were shining long before their 
rays reached our earth; the seed germinates in dark- 
ness and is growing long before we can see its growth ; 
so in the depths of an infant soul a process goes on 
which is hidden from our ken, yet upon which hangs 
more than we can dream of good or evil, happiness or 
misery." 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE STORY OF LIFE. 



"The Spirit of God hovered over chaos, and moved 
it; and stones and plants, beasts and man took form 
and separate being and life. God created man in his 
own image; therefore man should create and bring 
forth like God. His spirit, the spirit of man, should 
hover over the shapeless, and move it that it may take 
shape and form, a distinct being and life of its own. 
This is the high meaning, the deep significance, the 
great purpose of work and industry, of productive and 
creative activity." 

"Try, oh mother, to bring truth in its faintest 
prophecy near to your child, and it shall be to him a 
well-spring of peace and joy." — Froebel. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE STORY OF LIFE. 

It may seem improbable to those who have never 
thought about it, but the younger a child is the easier 
it is to give it truth impressions and teach it of God. 
Wordsworth tells us of the 'little child who lightly 
draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb." This 
child comprehended nothing but life. The great posi- 
tive truths are fundamental, accepted facts to children, 
and we need not hesitate to bring them directly to the 
child if we ourselves fully feel them. 

The one question above all others which mothers 
ask is, "How shall I teach my child concerning life?" 
For this is one of the first things each child clamors 
to know. No two children can be told alike; but if 
the mother is filled with conviction on the matter, the 
right thought will come. We are told by Froebel that 
all things lead up to God; and if we set out to lead 
our children to the divine explanation of life, every- 
thing will come to our assistance. 

Whether the child questions about the flower, the 

cat, or the baby, the happy opportunity is given to 

63 



64 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

bring to his thought some idea of God as the source 
of all. Here is a short conversation which might be 
helpful : 

"Mamma, who made baby?" 

**God did, my darling." 

''But how did / get here?" 

"Your papa brought you to us." 

"Where did papa get me?" 

"Papa got you from the same big world where he 
came from." 

"Where is that world?" 

"It is the world that we cannot see with our eyes." 

"Then how do we know about it?" 

"Don't you know anything when you shut your 
eyes?" 

"Oh, yes." 

"There is a world that the eyes cannot see nor the 
hands touch. It is the world where our good thoughts 
come from, and that is where you came from. I love 
to call it heaven, my darling, because it is the perfect 
place." 

"Did I come from heaven?" 

"Yes, you cam.e from heaven, the perfect place, 
where all is good. You are my child of God, and all of 
God's angels come with you." 

"Where are the angels, mamma?" 

"They are in your hands and in your feet. They 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 65 

help you and work with you, and keep you happy. 
They shine out of your eyes when you are a sunshine 
child, and they curl around you when you sleep, for 
they never sleep." 

I have a great many talks with my children about 
the angels, and they are definite realities to them, al- 
though unseen. They never question where they are 
or what they look like. They feel and know perfectly 
that they are some power that works with them for 
good, as invisible as the wind and warmth. It may 
be that this same thought would find no resting place 
in some children, but I believe that in any family where 
there is reverence for spiritual things the children 
would easily take it. 

Froebel teaches us how to use the invisible things 
as playmates for our children; and if we do this daily 
it is a very easy transition to give the child the thought 
of God. In the Mother Play of the "Weather Vane" 
and the "Light Bird," and in fact in nearly every one 
of these plays, is brought out the thought of the invis- 
ible power in cooperation with the child. These invis- 
ible powers are very easily brought to the child as 
realities. In our home they certainly do keep watch 
over the babes. To me they are the divinely given 
faculties and energies which work with my little chil- 
dren in harmony when they desire the good. If there 
is a hurt or fear we call to the angels to come and help. 



66 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Many a mother does the same with kisses, but this 
often becomes an encouragement of the evils. If there 
is anything that httle hands must not touch about the 
body, they are told that if let alone the angels will 
come and make it their home. This does away with 
all picking at the body and examination of parts. We 
often have little visits and look into each other's eyes 
to find real angels there, and when we cry we hunt for 
them but cannot see them. 

These are precious lessons that can be taught daily, 
wherein the invisible things become visible and God 
becomes something besides a word. If the mother has 
the ideal of angel life in her thought she will be sure 
to give it aright to the child and avoid any misconcep- 
tion or superstition. Angels are in constant attend- 
ance at our home with large and small, and the sweet 
promise, 'T will give my angels charge over thee," is 
made more tangible every hour. 

This suggestion of the spiritual presence should not 
be used too frequently, or the angels talked about too 
often, else they grow commonplace and tiresome. 

The angels should be used neither as a punishment 
nor as a promise. It is not well to say, "The angels 
will leave you if you are not good;" or, 'Tf you are 
good, the angels will come." Use the thought as a 
beautiful benediccion to the good act. For instance, 
upon being shown a bit of work well done by the 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 67 

child, say, "How the angels must have helped!" or, 
''Did you thank the angels for helping?" When little 
feet hesitate and slowly creep along, remark, 'The 
mgels in the little feet are helping." The angels would 
soon grow unpopular if used to criticise, or if they 
failed to keep their promises; like every high thing, 
they should be used choicely and wisely. 

All these sweet pictures will help the child to an 
idea of God, and then the explanation of what life 
is and where it comes from will be easy indeed, and it 
will be hard to cram into a child*s mind thus illumi- 
nated anything either trivial, pedantic, or evil on the 
subject of life and its source. The teaching of what 
life is should never be separated from the teaching of 
religion, for God is life, and life is always holy. With 
this holy sense of life comes to the child a reverence 
for every creature, great and small, and he is put in 
league with all the powers that work for the protection 
and reverence of life; thus his own life becomes an 
ideal thing to him, and his heart is made strong for 
every righteous cause. 

Froebel writes as follows : "Jesus, whom we all from 
innermost conviction consider our highest ideal, says: 
'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.' Is not 
the meaning of this, forbid them not, for the life given 
the-m by their heavenly Father still lives in them in 



68 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

its original wholeness: its free unfolding is still pos- 
sible with them?" 

Here is a little story written for a dear friend who 
took it upon herself to tell the story of life to some 
children whose own mother shrank from the duty, 
but who w-as about to again bear a little one and it was 
necessary to help the boys into an understanding of 
the reasons for these things. I give it here for what 
it is w^orth. It can be adapted to suit any case. As 
it stands it could almost be read direct to a child of 
six. 

Just before Christmas would be a beautiful time to 
take up this question with children, in connection with 
the stories of the Christ-Child. The holy child and 
the beautiful storv of its birth give us a very high start, 
and the higher w^e can build up to the story of the little, 
common child, the more w^e are fulfilling the Christlike 
ideals when he set the common child in their midst and 
defined heaven. 

We must renew our own conception of life to do this 
even as did the good Froebel. He says : 'The blessed 
thought came to me, Human nature in itself does not 
make it impossible for man to live and represent again 
the life of Jesus in its purity ; man can attain to the pu- 
rity of the life of Jesus if he only finds the right way 
to it. In looking back upon this thought I see that it 
was the heavenly moment of my life." 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 69 

Here is the little story just as it was first written, 
and I hope it may at least be a suggestion of the let- 
ter if not of the spirit : 

THE STORY OF LIFE. 

"Did you ever hear the wonder-story of how little 
babes are born? Of how they come into this beautiful 
world of earth and grass and stones and trees, with its 
everlasting blue sky above? Would you love to hear 
it, and shall I tell you? 

*'Let me play that I am your own dear mother for 
just a little while, and tell you all I know about you — 
and the same story is true of every little baby. 

"First of all I dreamed a dream. The dream was 
that you were coming to live with me, and it made 
me so glad because I knew it was true. And I told 
the dream to your father, and he smiled and kissed me, 
and we prayed together that we might be good, and 
that our arms and hearts might be wide open for you 
to come in, and that we might love each other forever. 

"And the first I knew of your dear little body was 
when I felt you right inside my heart, and inside my 
heart your little heart was beating, and my heart 
swelled so large to hold you, and I thought so many 
wonderful things of you every day. I thought this: 
how sweet that you should be a part of me and I a part 
of you, and all of us a part of the whole beautiful world 



70 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

of God. I dreamed so many dreams of joy and glad- 
ness. I dreamed that I myself was a little heart within 
the heart of God the Father, and that I was his little 
child, growing within his heart; and it swelled larger 
and warmer as I grew. And then I would wake up 
and say, *My heart must be so good and clean for the 
sake of the little heart within it.' I meant you. And 
I worked and I loved, and all the world full of children 
w^orked and loved with me to make a place for you 
when you should come among them. 

"And how my hands longed for you, and how your 
dear father waited and watched until he might take 
you and hold you close to his heart, too. 

"And one beautiful morning you came to us — 
straight from out my heart — right out of my body — 
through a beautiful door all made ready for you. My 
heart that had grown so strong with your love gave 
you up gladly and sent streams of beautiful mother- 
milk to my breasts for you to drink, for my heart knew 
what you loved most, and what you had need of. 

'And even though you are my strong, brave child, 
and playing in the beautiful world of green and blue, 
yet you are still in my heart. I feel you there even 
to-day, and you, yourself, can never get out. Your 
father and I are one." 



If we always keep the beautiful thought of life as 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 71 

one with the subject of religion, it naturally brings us 
face to face with the too often neglected duty of train- 
ing the child's religious thought. Religion is the 
natural consciousness of the young mind, which is full 
of devotion, positive and simple in what it believes, 
reverencing the least and slightest thing and under- 
standing truth statements only. 

A misstatement always puzzles a normal child. It 
has to be taught untruths, it does not know them 
naturally; and it is a sorry fact that many parents un- 
consciously do this by their silly pretenses and hypoc- 
risy. You can teach a child the letter of the law of 
honesty and he will never conceive of it unless you 
are living out the spirit of the same law in your own 
life. To preserve truth to the child he needs but to 
be loved, as St. Paul describes in I Corinthians 13, and 
set free according to Jesus Christ by being given the 
truth; then he stands some chance of coming into full 
possession of the kingdom of heaven which is within 
him. 

Dear mothers, let us pore over, study, and ponder 
the precious words of the interpreters of life. Let us 
be reverent toward everything in our homes, and then 
each thing will reflect that reverence, and the young- 
est child will radiate it. 

Direct rehgious teaching based on the Bible is hard 
for children to understand. It must be brought to 



72 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

their childlike understanding. For instance, the 
words of Jesus, written by the beloved disciple, might 
be made to read for little children: ''Unless ye love 
the little child which ye have seen, how can ye love 
the Christ-Child which ye have not seen?" And then 
he gives us these beautiful words: "Little children, 
love one another," which are the center of all the re- 
ligious teaching children need. Naturally they love 
one another with an absolute and unquestioning love. 
The mother needs to lead this natural love into ex- 
pression through loving deeds toward all, and that is 
the whole of religion. 

A mother's stronghold with her children is how 
much she lives out into their lives and experiences, 
and by her questions and interest, even though she 
cannot go with them, she can still enjoy their deepest 
feelings and live them all over with them at home. 
The habit of telling mother everything that has hap- 
pened during the day is a great safeguard from wrong- 
doing for any boy or girl. 

Every night at the bedside it is well to indulge in 
such a review of the day's doings, however slight. 
With the smallest, those just able to talk, or only able 
to grunt an answer, a very happy beginning may be 
made by asking: ''Do you love mamma?" "And 
papa?" and so on through the whole list of baby's 
acquaintances. This is very much more tangible to 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 73 

the baby than any prayer could be, and it is really the 
essence of all prayer to learn to love one another. 
Thus bedtime grows to be a delightful hour, antici- 
pated by even the youngest. 

Let the home be the sifting place for all the ex- 
periences of every day, and the loving mother at the 
cradle can thus relate and unify all the thoughts and 
activities of her growing boys and girls, as well as 
those of the tiny babe before her. 

Each and every mother will find her own child a 
new revelation which will uncover the mysteries of life 
to her as none other can, and it is well that she share 
with them their thoughts of religion. If she will take 
up the stories of the Christ-Child with her children 
regularly once or twice each week, a sense of religion 
and love will easily come to them. Nowadays we 
have such treasures of art and story bringing us the 
marvelous child. 

Some children that I know are making wonderful 
discoveries in what they call the "Love-Baby Book," 
and will stand at mother's knee and love each picture 
in turn, crying out at each Madonna, "Mamma!" in 
such tones of delight as only children can give. 
Every "baby" receives its caress. The "papas" in the 
illustrations are a constant source of stories — how 
they take baby up high in arms, and, in fact, every 
wonderful thing which can be told of the father, who 



74 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

daily goes out into the great world, only to come back 
and connect the children's days of joy with nights of 
sweet dreams. 

These children handle the book itself reverently, and 
it is untorn and unsoiled, because mother's gentle 
fingers turn the pages, and the most patient little 
hearts await in expectant surprise the new picture to 
be disclosed. Then little feet dance and the tiny 
hands clap for joy, and the mouths offer kisses untold 
to the beloved madonnas and the exquisite babies. 

These beautiful pictures are the rarest opportunity 
we have of giving our children love and reverence for 
the Christ and the mother. Try it, even if in the be- 
ginning you should waste a few of your art treasures 
or soil a beloved book. They can be replaced; at any 
rate, who knows but that they may live forever in the 
heart of your child, and be an inspiration to a great 
life, full of untiring love and noble deeds? 

We mothers have such immeasurable opportunities 
with our own little "child-garden" at our feet, watch- 
ing with renewed interest each tiny plant therein, and 
helping it to grow and blossom in the sunshine of real 
love! There is no sweeter study to share with our 
children than child-life itself, and if the Christ-Child 
indeed comes and makes his abode in our hearts, life 
will have no impossibilities in it, and no mysteries. 

We may also branch out into our neighbor's home. 



THE STORY OF LIFE. 75 

with its new-born babe, perhaps, and make our chil- 
dren the sweet custodians and caretakers of it, letting 
them each day do something, or think beyond them,- 
selves. 

Then the children find that after all the Christ- 
Child is only the spirit of cooperation which proves 
the great world to be a single, big-hearted family, each 
loving one another; and nothing is too much to give 
or to do, and the Christ is with us always if we obey 
his commandments. This is the ideal humanity, and 
the little child, unspoiled, understands nothing else, 
for it is dictated by the purest natural religion which 
he expresses and lives. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 



"You must keep holy the being of the young child; 
protect it from every rough and rude impression, from 
every touch of the vulgar. A gesture, a look, a sound 
is often sufficient to inflict such wounds. The child's 
soul is more tender and vulnerable than the finest or 
tenderest plant. It would have been far different with 
humanity if every individual in it had been protected 
in that tenderest age as befitted the human soul which 
holds within itself the divine spark. 

"The pure and good heart and the thoughtful and 
gentle sympathies natural in the child constitute in 
themselves a 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 

How beautiful are the first days after baby's arrival, 
especially if the mother's heart is full of thankfulness 
for health and strength. These are precious hours of 
quiet when she is so much alone with the newborn. 
The poet says: 

"What fills up the soul with such happiness 
As the love of a baby, that laug^hs to be 
Snuggled away where the heart can hear?" 

All the softening, delightful emotion she feels, and 
the great waves of love and thankfulness which pass 
over her, are experiences which every woman might 
well covet. Say what you please, the mere giving 
birth to a child is an experience most elevating, 
both in mind and feeling, and its wonder cannot be 
described. 

The simplest, most unthinking woman is bound to 
expand in passing through this miracle of nature. She 
is bound to be the better, the greater. And if she will 
only take advantage of this royal moment when she 

79 



80 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

has thus become one with the most potent quality in 
nature and humanity — motherhood; if she will only 
recognize her place and seek to be good enough to fill 
it, what a leap she will take into the higher realms of 
living and doing. If only the right word might be 
spoken to each woman at this crisis in her life — at the 
moment when she has transfigured herself by giving 
birth to a child! If only the full import of the event 
mig'ht be made clear to her, and her life be held to 
the heights to which it was lifted! We mothers should 
go to each other in these experiences, and express 
our deep reverence for this divine uplift and help to 
preserve it to each. 

A beautiful friend of mothers has spoken in these 
lines: 

"How many Christs are born to-day? 

How many mothers, prophet-wise, 

Are gazing into baby eyes? 
In whose clear depths they thoughtful see 
All they may ever see, or we, 

Of God — incarnate Deity. 

"Madonnas hallow every home; 
O'er every roof where babies are 
Shines high and pure a guiding star; 

And mother hearts do always hear 

Divinest music ringing clear. 

And peace and love, good will on earth, 
Are born with every baby's birth." 



THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 81 

How many a mother's heart will answer these lines 
with an ''Amen!" for do we not all hunger to trace our 
children to the higher source? Is not the human heart 
daring constantly to look to God as the source of 
life and being? and is not this longing in itself the ab- 
solute and immortal reason for its truth? And think 
what a blessing the child receives in this attitude — 
the mother and father both actively searching for the 
divine within him! 

Froebel gives us some very practical methods by 
which to proceed in the development of our child from 
the very first day. He says: ''The careful nursing of 
the inner, spiritual life must begin earlier than the ex- 
pression of it is possible; before its tender susceptibility 
is disturbed by outward influences." He means here 
those sacred hours when the mother comes into such 
close contact through holding her babe so many times 
each day to her breast; the constant handling through 
dressing and washing. He tells us that if each of these 
duties is done intelligently and for the highest good 
to the spiritual life it will also result in the highest 
good to the body. 

Again Froebel says: "Thus maternal instinct and 
love gradually introduce the child to his little outside 
world, proceeding from the whole to the part, from 
the near to the remote." 

How seldom do we look upon the advent of the 

6 



82 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

babe as something of religious import! How seldom 
do we look at a birth except in a material sense! 
Baby's reception into the world and his introduction 
to his fellow beings are often of a very amusing nature. 
In our worldliness we hardly realize this. When first 
we examine to see whom he looks like, and find he 
has hair just like his Uncle John, then we express the 
hope that he will not be consumptive like him, and 
forthwith examine his chest. If the pins prick him and 
he cries — ''Oh, yes, he's irritable; the same tempera- 
ment that his father has." *'How he does eat! Just 
like the whole Brown family; they all have big stom- 
achs." And baby finds himself stufifed to his heart's 
content, because of his inherited capacity. In this way 
baby is watched and judged, peculiarities are thrust 
upon him and held so real that he grows right into the 
narrow lines that are being prescribed for him. 

Who does not know this only too well.^ And yet 
when we stop to think, we confess we should recognize 
our children as original individuals, who should live 
and grow in freedom and spontaneity. Froebel says: 
*'It is man's destiny to become a righteous, reasonable, 
free being." If we would receive each child without 
hampering it or condemning it to a fixed destiny 
through inheritance, a very different result would fol- 
low. We should struggle to keep the old, false condi- 
tions in check, and let them die with those who per- 



THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 83 

petrated them through their unscientific habits of Hv- 
ing. 

The law of heredity is subject to the molding of 
righteous thought. Each one of us can cite cases 
where hereditary taints have been outgrown and ob- 
literated through intelligence. Emerson says: 'The 
mind must be the measure of health. If your eye is 
on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and your opin- 
ions and actions v/ill have a beauty which no learning 
or combined advantages of other men can rival." 

I know of one family in which the mother fought 
like a tigress against some taints in her family blood. 
She felt the full responsibility, and in her loving de- 
sire to free her children, she made every effort to 
counteract it all. Not one child out of eight was 
touched, while the children of the immediate relatives 
were all allowed to fellow in the inherited footsteps. 
You ask how did she do it? I have often heard the 
story from her own lips, and it has been a great assur- 
ance to me that even the least favored mother can ac- 
complish much through her convictions, for this 
m.other was a foreigner, with little of what might be 
termed ''higher education." 

She tells how she never would believe that her chil- 
dren would express this trouble. She felt convinced 
that if she did her duty it would not come, and felt 
that it must have been neglect in the beginning. She 



84 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

never allowed it to be spoken of in her house. If a 
symptom did arise, she fought it out of her house with 
a vehemence alm.ost equal to that which made the 
whipcords in the temple so powerful. She kept her 
children very close to her, watched them with jealous 
care night and day, and if one were sick, no one ex- 
cept the father was allowed to help in its nursing. She 
always declared that if she did her duty this evil could 
not lodge in her family, and she struggled to do it with 
all her might. She had eight children, and only two 
hands to do the manifold work of her house; but she 
won her brave battle. To-day she can point to her 
eight children as men and women clothed in health 
and intelligence, and twelve grandchildren, and not 
one touch of the dreaded diseases has come to light. 
When I tell you that the trouble was asthma on one 
side and consumption on the other, you will join with 
me in glorying in this mother's conquest with God's 
help. 

There is hardly a mother among us who has not 
some battle of this sort to fight over bodily or mental 
ills. Family life is of little value unless there is some- 
where a chance of mastery over these almost universal 
conditions. 

Instead of giving baby a fore-ordained reception, 
if we could meet him in the free spirit of love, because 
he is a human being, our battle would be half won. 



THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 85 

If there is evidence of any shortcomings or peculiari- 
ties in his makeup, remember that that very thing is 
the something yon must help him to overcome. You 
must live for his liberation, and teach him also how 
to wipe it out. It must be especially the mother's 
thought that such is not his true condition, that his 
rightful inheritance is health and intelligence and good 
disposition. It is bad enough that he must live down 
the mistakes of his ancestors, without emphasizing 
them for him. You have invited him to walk in these 
pleasant world-valleys with you, and the shadow of 
the overtopping mountain of materialism all about 
should be dissolved by the sunlight of your own guid- 
ing presence. 

Froebel says: "Why is all childhood and youth so 
full of wealth and so unconscious of it? And why 
does it lose it without knowing it, only to learn what it 
possessed when it is forever lost?" We can all of us 
answer. Because we, the adult guardians, have 
cheapened for our children this rich inheritance. We 
have failed to recognize it and keep it alive, and we 
have been faithless to our sacred duty. In the "Edu- 
cation of Man" we are given the clearest picture of 
what should be the environment of the very young 
child. In the second chapter is taken up every practi- 
cal point of food, clothing, play, rest, sleep, and health, 
all written from the standpoint taken in these pages — 



86 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

that the child is in actuality the child of God, to be 
recognized and considered so above all, and always, 
and that right in our midst he brings us the possibility 
of the kingdom of heaven. 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE RADIANT MOTHER." 



'The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of 
women — the mothers — than in the possessors of 
power, or of those innovators who, for the most part, 
do not understand themselves. We must cultivate 
women, who are the educators of the human race, else 
the new generation cannot accomplish its task. 

''In a healthily constituted family it is the mother who 
first cares for, watches over, and develops the child, 
teaches him to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, 
deriving everything she teaches from its central unity, 
and gathering up her teaching into that unity again. 

"The father receives his son from the hand and heart 
of the mother; with his soul already full of true, active 
life, of desire for the knowledge of causes and eiifects, 
for the understanding of the whole and its ramifica- 
tions; with his mind open to the truth and his eyes to 
the light, and with a perpetually nourished yearning 
for creative ability, able to observe while building up, 
and to recognize while taking apart. Such in himself 
and his surroundings, always active, creative, full of 
thought and endeavor, the father receives his son in his 
home, to train and teach him for the wider life outside." 
— F'roebel, 



CHAPTER VI. 

"THE RADIANT MOTHER." 

Did you ever start out in the morning to live a per- 
fect day? If you have ever tried it you will be tempted 
to persist, for the sake of those most dear to you. It 
is the separate perfect days joined each to each that 
make for the perfect life, just as it is each separate per- 
fect deed that makes the perfect day. We must make 
a beginning at Hving the perfect life some time, some- 
where; why not now and here, and while those we 
love may have the benefit? 

The poet says: 

"And I could wish my days to be 
Joined each to each in natural piety." 

But wishing for it will accomplish nothing. How 
to begin is the first question; how to persist is the next, 
and success follows. 

The simple mother at home, with her family about 
her, may think her place is the hardest to fill with per- 
fection. But it is not so if she can only attune herself 
to a high enough harmony. A perfect life lived in the 

midst of a circle of children — think what eternal cir- 

89 



90 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

cles will radiate therefrom! Is it not worth striving 
for? I always begin my day and find it expressed in 
a sort of morning prayer, something like the following: 

"Thank God for this day, this rare opportunity to 
live perfectly. Thanks for each living thing about 
me. There is no great or small ; each one, each thing, 
is fresh from the Divine hand, and I must know it, 
feel it, and esteem it. To-day I must love each one, 
each thing, for only as I love it does it enter into my 
consciousness — into my life. I must find the Christ, 
the principle of love, in everything about me; and as 
I find it, it enters into me and becomes a part of me 
and I of it. Only as I partake of Love and give it out 
do I have life in me." 

The main point is to start out in the right attitude of 
mind, and then you may be certain the day will un- 
fold its perfection to you; and if we take hold of our 
work and do it in the right spirit, it is the heavenly 
work. 

"Oh, Day, if I squander a moment of thee, 
One jot of thy twelve hours' pleasure" — 

So sings Pippa, the little silk winder of Asola, whom 
Browning portrays as a type of the vital power of 
love and purity. She has but one day in the whole 
year free from labor at the loom, and she thus greets 
the day as she is preparing to go out for her happy 
rounds. The poet relates the many unhappy situ- 



"THE RADIANT MOTHER." 91 

ations which she changes from sorrow, discord and 
crime to happiness, harmony and righteousness by 
her singing and her simple presence. A mother's Hfe 
should be such a song and carry such an atmosphere. 

I want to be practical in these talks to my dear 
mother friends, and assure them that in this constant 
practice of right principle each day and hour we can 
change our homely, humdrum lives into masterpieces, 
to be imitated and extolled, to be forever remembered 
by our children. 

Emerson says that only in the mastery and living 
out of principles do we ever arrive at peace; and cer- 
tainly we will not arrive at success in family build- 
ing on any lower platform. Where principle guides 
the mother her children will one day rise up and call 
her blessed, for she has given them the secret of suc- 
cessful life and happiness. That appresciation and 
gratitude from our children are the greatest return 
for all our efforts each mother of us will confess. Be- 
sides, we might as well make up our minds to do the 
full duty from the start; for each neglected duty must 
be harvested, and perhaps the world may be obliged 
to come up in the rear and reap some of the tares we 
have sown. Better sow aright and reap the sweet 
reward ourselves. 

Every mother finds that she is being constantly 
pushed to the wall by the ceaseless activity and de- 



92 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

mands of her children. Bless the creative genius of 
perpetual childhood, how it stirs us and probes us! 
How it urges us and tests us! And if we answer the 
demand, how we widen our own lives and enhance 
and heighten the possibilities of each babe! If the 
radiant mother opens wide the door, the beauty and 
freshness of eternal life rest forever on her child. If 
the mother's heart is aglow and her impulses aroused to 
give her child the noblest preparation for life, there 
will be few of her burdens but will dissolve themselves 
in her divine ambition. 

A mother's heart must indeed be consecrated. Was. 
there ever a more fervent wish on a mother's lips 
than that her children might be spared every ill? 
But do we half realize that the spirit in our homes, 
the free atmosphere, so to speak, is a great preven- 
tive? Somehow we are often led to confess that par- 
ents who seem most careless are least afflicted. A 
reasonable answer to this puzzling situation is this: 
perhaps there is more room in such homes for joy 
than for anxiety; more room for freedom than criti- 
cism; more room for love than fear; and are not joy 
and freedom Love's divinest blessings, bringing bless- 
ings in their train? 

"For there is no might in the universe 

That can contend with Love. It reigns supreme." 

But how shall I find this love? you ask. It is by 



"THE RADIANT MOTHER." 93 

never wasting a moment in anything except in the 
expression of love — wise love; by the constant putting 
of it into acts and deeds, and demanding it in return 
from our loved ones. With babies have the word 
*'love" always on the lips. Let love be a living pres- 
ence that watches over them. Never intrude upon the 
rights of a single child, but quietly sympathize with 
each one and unselfishly cooperate in every way with 
each and its love will be given you in return. 

If we are selfish in one single thought we are not 
true mothers. We must be unselfish absolutely, and 
sacrifice all self-comfort to our great purpose. The 
angel life Vv^ithin each child is more precious than any 
other thing in the world; yet mothers often plant self- 
ishness through their own acts when they should be 
planting a fair heaven of loving and giving within the 
young mind. What are the different kinds ot acl^sh- 
ness which even enlightened mothers indulge in? L?t 
each search her own heart in constant reverence for 
truth, and be honest with herself and root out all save 
truth, and we can do it if we recognize that there is 
not a single evil thing in us that cannot be taken out 
with the truth. It is possible at every stage and age 
for us to find our original self, always pure, and aim 
to return to it. 

How important that each mother of us should con- 
ceive of herself aright; that she should find herself 



94 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

planted in the Divine, and that she grow in grace ! We 
have the first opportunity to teach the world its spirit- 
ual source, for we contribute the family as an eternal 
stratum in its progress. 

The mother spirit is at the bottom of everything 
that is builded for eternity, and love is all there is in 
beng a mother. With love enough she can fulfill all 
things; harmony and power radiate from a mother 
permeated with love — wise love. The entire family 
will respond and demand the law and order dictated 
by a love-crowned mother. She will be alive and al- 
ways full of the expression of love, giving energy and 
right direction to sons, daughters and father. Her 
every word will be a joy, a w^onder and a surprise to 
all, for it will reach with sympathetic understanding 
into each heart, and liberate in each one ''emotions 
that angels might share," and open up to each paths 
into life clear and straight, radiating from herself as 
the central sun. 

As mothers we must be full of joy and always find 
reasons to be glad, practicing gladness. We must be 
happy, and never undervalue children or husband or 
even ourselves. We must not doubt our work as 
mothers, but honor it and also the work of our chil- 
dren. If we stop one moment to add to the struggle 
of the world by struggling over ourselves we are rob- 
bing ourselves and others. 



"THE RADIANT MOTHER." 95 

We must be radiant always, and let every footfall 
be filled with rebounding impulse. To never be weary 
we must refresh ourselves in every thought by reach- 
ing above self, even if at first we are constantly aware 
that it is an effort to keep a smile round the eyes. 
Look well and find what it is you are radiating; per- 
haps you are pouring out over your home, husband 
and children, thoughts of despair and fear, of restless- 
ness and criticism, of envy, or even jealousy. They 
are all bound to throw sand into the family cogs and 
take the ease out of life. 

The thought that radiates from the mother makes 
or unmakes the atmosphere of the home. How many 
cases we see of children who do not seem to appreciate 
their parents. It is generally because they have had 
too much done for them and nothing expected in 
return. This is one of the commonest phases of self- 
ishness among parents. If they really loved their chil- 
dren they would not rob them of their opportunities 
to do for others; they would not bring them up self- 
ishly to learn bitter lessons in after life. 

We will not have problems when we see clearly that 
our work and what we accomplish, that only is our 
life. The poet tells us that ^'only the sorrows of 
others" are ours; and when we stop arguing over our- 
selves, and discussing our rights and wrongs, we find 
ourselves free to do and feel truly. We are not in the 



96 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

world to heap burdens upon it. When we struggle 
we are not loving and working; we are wasting time 
and making hard places for ourselves and battles 
which we must tight out. There is always a chain of 
consequences to every indulgence in living and self- 
ishness. 

We must respect ourselves as contained in the moth- 
erhood which is of God, the universal life-giving 
principle; and if we keep ourselves conscious of the 
divinity of God in our own hearts, then we are really 
mothers and stars to the uplifted eyes of our children. 
If we are loyal to ourselves as mothers, loyal to the 
father and home, loyal to the spiritual life of our chil- 
dren, are we not loyal to God? If we are loyal to our 
families, we are true to the universe. 

If we begin with the spiritual cause as the true cause 
of life, and see our children as gifts of God, a spiritual 
result is bound to run through the entire current which 
our life sets in motion, which will lead our children 
out into the great highway of pure living. The moth- 
er's mind should always be filled with this conviction: 
"God is the cause of all, and God is Good." The 
mother's thought is what gives the eternal result in 
family and race. 

To be spiritual mothers we should never indulge 
in personality either with our children or our friends. 
We must be mothers in everything, and constantly 



'THE RADIANT MOTHER." 97 

practice taking hold of the truth, and find it every- 
where. Personal motherhood always limits the child 
to its own limitations, and it never brings anything 
but struggle and disappointment. 

You ask what T mean by personal motherhood. To 
me it is that in a mother which holds the child selfishly 
to her own heart, which grows jealous if the child ex- 
presses affection elsewhere (as though we should not 
welcome every expression of love) ; it is that which is 
in constant fear lest evil befall, forgetting God as a 
real guardian; which will not allow the child a chance 
to try its power lest it hurt itself. A personal mother 
has no interest in children other than her own; the 
moment she loves other children equally, and would 
share her best with them for the sake of the whole 
good, she becomes a universal mother. A personal 
m.other is always selfish, and she generally has her 
hands full of powerful difHculties — perhaps all with 
one child. A personal, selfish mother is one who 
allows her children to indulge in willfulness and un- 
control, petting and kissing where she should help 
with divine wisdom and authority — all because she is 
so weak-hearted in her mistaken love. You see her 
every day. You realize her intense selfishness when 
you picture to yourself what must some day be the 
struggles of these poor children, left for the world to 
chasten with no ungentle hand. Better it be the hand 



98 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

of love. That mother who learns to wisely teach her 
child self-control is a universal mother, for she is doing 
the whole world a favor. 

The pictures of personal motherhood are only too 
numerous; we might fill many a page with them. Is 
not a wail going up from the nation because of this 
type of motherhood? Why are the common avenues 
of life so crowded with unsuccess and so lacking in 
characterful men? Because mothers waste their chil- 
dren's plastic years in indulgence and emptiness. A 
selfish mother is Satan in the concrete. She is work- 
ing out the deepest plots of the evil powers, and work- 
ing them out on her own flesh and blood; for what 
worse bondage can be heaped upon a child than the 
bondage to self? It is the bondage our race is under 
to-day. Selfish motherhood is a paradox and an ab- 
surdity. Why does humanity mourn to-day? Be- 
cause mothers in the past have been selfish and have 
failed to set their children free. 

Let every thinking mother call herself to her senses 
and see if she is feeding to her children the muddy 
stream of selfishness, personality and sensuality; or 
is each young life allowed to be a well of everlasting, 
free, universal life, springing up to water the whole 
earth with its refreshing radiance? 

Shall we mothers turn this living well of our chil- 
dren's souls into a cistern, made only to receive, not 



"THE RADIANT MOTHER." 99 

give, and be filled from without? or shall we keep the 
fresh, living supply ever and ever more alive by draw- 
ing upon it, and keeping the child forever in touch 
with the deep, unfathomable sources of its spiritual 
being? 

And what about the selfish wife? Does she send her 
husband out in the morning with the ambition to deal 
righteously and work out his worldly destiny with 
some glow of truth in it? Or does she only look to 
what pleasure and plenty he can bring her, never ques- 
tioning whence they come? How many women urge 
their husbands into humanitarian efforts, and offer 
to go without luxuries that they may help in the up- 
lifting of the race? How many women even inform 
themselves as to what their husbands' temptations are 
— temptations to make money by unprincipled 
methods? How many women ask when they spend 
a dollar, what brought it? Was it paid for by a 
strained vitality, or was it gained at the expense of 
the husband's soul? 

A man who is not encouraged to expand into his 
worshipful self somewhat — who is not urged into hu- 
manitarianism and philanthropy, if only in a small de- 
gree — becomes a hardened man, and a selfish, limited 
and unjust husband and father. The privilege of uni- 
versal fatherhood should not be denied him, and the 
unselfish mother and wife will see to it that his larger 



100 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

nature have a chance, and that he shall not always 
grovel after dollars. 

The mother must radiate ideals for her whole house- 
hold. She must be the life-inspiring center and ui;ge 
each one out into broader channels and higher aims. 
This is the only way we can work if we work for per- 
manent returns. If we are doing unceasingly, lovingly 
adding our children as a pure stream out into life, 
then only are we doing what mothers should do. Then 
we feel that God is with us and leads us into just what 
we need, and it ^vill make happiness for our whole 
circle. God does work with those who love, especially 
those who love childhood. 

I repeat, dear mother, be radiant always. Search 
out causes for joy. True motherhood is always joy- 
ous. Love and joy are one. They are the loving 
heart of the world. 

When a praying mother's bedtime comes her heart 
will question many, many things: Has this day been 
full of joy? Have I helped each heart to open wider? 
Have I inspired each one to better things? Have I 
for one moment dared to be weary? Can I love those 
I call mine better to-morrow than I loved them to- 
day? Is there any joy anywhere that is still undiscov- 
ered to me and my house? — then I must find it in the 
sweet to-morrow. 



CHAPTER VII. 
CHILD REARING. 



"For surely, the nature of man is in itself good. 

"The child ought to be considered a complete being 
during every period of life. 

"Some suppose the child to be empty; wish to inocu- 
late him with life, make him as empty as they think 
him to be, and deprive him of life, as it were. 

"Let fathers contemplate what the fulfillment of 
their paternal duties in child-guidance yields to them,; 
let them feel the joy it brings. It is not possible to 
gain from anything higher joy, higher enjoyment, than 
we do from the guidance of our children, from living 
with and for our children. It is inconceivable how we 
can seek and expect to find anywhere higher joy, 
higher enjoyment, fuller gratification of our best de- 
sires, than we can find in intercourse with our children ; 
or more recreation than we can find in the family circle, 
where we can create joy for ourselves in so many re- 
spects." — Frocbcl, 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHILD REARING. 

It is certainly meant that the child should come to 
us a free creature. The question we must ask our- 
selves is, Do we receive and keep him so, or do we 
find him a mere bundle of hereditary traits of charac- 
ter and personal attributes borrowed from his ances- 
tors, which we are to wrestle with for better or worse? 

Here is the creed prescribed by our loving prophet 
of childhood: "The fundamental idea of Christianity, 
that we are of God's children (or that God lives in 
humanity), expressed in the New Testament by the 
words, 'You are of divine lineage,' explains the relation 
of man to God exhaustively for all times." 

The child conies and it grows, and it seems hard 

to see in it the light of the Divine. At first it appears 

to do nothing but eat and sleep, and its greatest needs 

are bathing and changing. This in itself does not look 

particularly inspiring; yet everyone will confess that 

this little being is the seed of all that is majestic and 

intelligent, and worth the world itself. Like the flower 

103 



104 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

in the crannied wall, if we could understand it we 
would know ''what God and man is." 

Wordsworth speaks of his month-old babe: 

"Moving untouched in silvery purity, 
* * * On thy face, 
Smiles are beginning, like the beam of dawn 
To shoot and circulate. * * * 
Or shall these smiles be called 
Feelers of love — put forth as if to explore 
This untried world?" 

The deepest secret for a mother to possess in the 
rearing of her children is that every single evidence 
of thought and expression on the part of her child Is 
of equal importance. The first smile is as much a 
feeler out into the universe and the first step a tour 
of discovery (and as important to the child), as was the 
sailing of Columbus to the world. 

In working with children the great secret is to begin 
soon enough and to begin right — to begin with the 
whole child. Nearly all questioning mothers are busy 
asking about the ways of taking care of the body. 
Their whole time seems spent battling with physical 
conditions. Froebel says: "In the infant, as is often 
erroneously done, we take care not only of the bodily 
powers, by exercising merely the senses and limbs; 
and then, later, v/hen the school period arrives, make 
the intellectual powers alone act; but steadily, and 



CHILD REARING. 105 

during the whole period of childhood, body and mind 
should be exercised and cultivated together." In this 
lies the secret of perfect development, for if the whole 
child is cared for all the time there will be no neglected 
parts, faculties, or tendencies left as stumbling-blocks 
later on. 

Children are 30 ready to respond to this unity. To 
see and think and to do are one to the child; to see and 
to understand and to do are a single impulse; and if 
our thinking, seeing and doing toward him are quite 
as single, unquestioned, orderly and direct, we will 
be apt to avoid many mistakes. 

Have you ever noticed how eagerly a six-months'- 
old child will grasp the slightest opportunity to ex- 
press itself? It will show you in many ways that it 
can understand more than it can express. How it loves 
to hear voices and be with the family; and how the 
eyes turn to every sound and motion! This is the 
time to play the little kicking and falling games given 
in the "Mother Play," and when the first-gift balls 
are to be suspended, one at a time, for baby to touch 
and swing. In the kindergarten we study what is 
called the law of growth. We take the tiny seed for 
our example, so perfect, so self-contained, and we our- 
selves represent the gardeners. The comparison is 
very clearly made between the plant and the gardener 
and the mother with her child. The tiny thing is so 



106 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

complete, so ready to enter into its higher stale, and 
all it needs is right conditions. The mother must take 
hold in all eagerness and work with her seedling, 
understanding, loving and caring for it. 

Mothers must watch as does the tender gardener — 
not for seasons, but for years; pruning away the past 
and training the present into its fullest value. As one 
writer expresses it: 

''A fresh little bud in my garden. 

With petals close folded from view. 

Brightly nods me a cheery 'Good morning' 
Through the drops of a fresh bath of dew. 

*'I must patiently wait its unfolding, 
Tho' I long its full beauty to see; 

Leave soft breezes and warm, tender sunshine 
To perform the sweet office for me. 

"I may shield my fair baby blossom; 

With trellis its weakness uphold; 
With nourishment wisely sustain it. 

And cherish its pure heart of gold. 

"Then in good time, which is God's time. 
Developed by sunshine and shower, 

Some morning I'll find in the garden, 
Where my bud was, a beautiful flower.'* 

Froebel gives us the keynote when he says: "The 
child at every stage of its development is a complete 
being." Not for one single moment can we add any- 
thing unto the child; we can only help to a more per- 



CHILD REARING. 107 

feet unfoldment of what is within. Also the psychol- 
ogist tells us that the child is not a "bundle" of ac- 
tivities, but "one activity," and what affects the part 
affects the whole; that it has a perfect center from 
which it gradually and slowly reaches out into its 
fuller being. The Bible expresses it as "The seed 
within itself." 

Now, in all this, where is the practical thought for us 
mothers? It is this: That instead of analyzing our chil- 
dren we shall regard them as ideal individuals; for as 
God has made them they must be perfect, and for what 
is seemingly imperfect we are responsible. And the 
responsibility rests upon us to "take away the stone" 
we have perhaps unwittingly placed before the door 
of their spiritual selves. 

It is our duty to open up the avenues of their lives 
and let them live out into the beauties of, first, the 
family life, and then into the broader life relationships. 
It is ours to make them ready to truly fulfill their own 
share in this living chain and see that they are not the 
weakest link. 

We have undertaken a tremendous work when we 
have undertaken to raise a child, but one which will 
bring the sweetest fruits if well done, done little by 
little and systematically. 

We ought always to act from love and not duty 
with our children. What we do purely from duty is, 



108 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

in fact, not even begun. Duty without love is an 
empty millstone, grinding itself. 

Children are happy in loving cooperation, and 
never happy in any other way. When a child sees 
something another has made that is w^ell done, it 
makes him feel sure he can do equally well if he takes 
hold, and this teaches us that children should have 
only perfect examples. Fathers and mothers who as- 
pire to live perfect lives will have children who grow 
day by day to be a joy to their hearts instead of ever- 
increasing problems. Parentage will grow to be less 
and less a bondage and more and more a blessing and 
a freer life, to those who enter into it, if the parents 
look into the heart of their own motives and aspira- 
tions, purify them, and definitely and intelligently plan 
to deal with their children aright. 

In Miss Susan Blow's outlines of the "Mother Play'* 
she puts this question: "What does the ideal of free- 
dom imply?" And this very telling answer comes 
from one mother: 

"As one who is taught daily by her two youngest 
children, may I speak and tell what freedom means 
to me? I have learned one thing above all else — that 
I must make my ideals live, if my children are in any 
way to be influenced by them. If I practice them 
spasmodically the children either miss the point or 
gradually come to doubt the ideal as well as the ideal- 



CHILD REARING. 109 

ist. To realize freedom has been one of my deepest 
longings. I have long worn dress reform, and have 
interested myself in education and even politics in a 
quiet way. 

"There have been many things in my home which 
have held me in bondage. My children were restless, 
hard to manage, the youngest child being even pee- 
vish. I discovered that while I was seeking and work- 
ing for personal freedom my nursery was enjoying 
anything but sweet liberty. Each child was under 
bondage of some sort, either of temperament or ill 
health. It came upon me with great force that my 
ideals must be made practical and that the work must 
begin at home — in the, very cradle. On making an in- 
vestigation of myself, I found that I was in the habit 
of treating my baby as a helpless tot. I so often said, 
Toor little dear! you can't do that, you are so little. 
Come, mamma will help you.' In this way I was giv- 
ing orders as if my baby were a prisoner in chains 
before she was a full year old, in a tone of voice which 
was the contrary to developing and constructing; at 
the same time I overpowered her with attention and 
watched every movement she made with precaution. 
My other children had all been peevish, and I had 
taken for granted that it was natural or inherited; but, 
thanks to the kindergarten study, I began to think 
and observe child nature. The first thing I learned 



110 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

was to set my baby free — perfectly free. I learned to 
do for her and speak to her as to an equal. 

"I cannot help telling you here of the wonderful 
response I had. I began to correct my own bad habit 
by saying aloud to myself, 'I can teach you nothing; 
I can only let you grow.' 'We are equals, baby and 
I.' 'I am not serving you, dressing, washing and feed- 
ing you; it is the hand of love alone that can do that.' 
'We love each other perfectly, don't we, dear baby?' 
'You and I are equal, and both of us free.' 'You have 
all the wisdom there is, in your dear heart, and we are 
perfectly responsible to each other in everything.' 
Such were my thoughts, my feelings, and my prayers. 
Every day they grew sweeter, more real, and more 
completely earnest; and every day not only my wee 
babe, but the other children grew freer and more self- 
controlled, more loving and responsive, and less and 
less peevish, restless and wearing. I was no longer 
dictating, no longer controlling, no longer watching 
for failures and limitations, but we were working to- 
gether on mutual suggestion; we were truly a coop- 
erating and harmonious family. 

"I wish Froebel might be translated: 'Come, let us 
bo children together in the pure freedom of idealizing 
one another.' To me the ideal of freedom implies the 
setting of everybody free, and then we find freedom 
ourselves and become truly of one mind and of one 



CHILD REARING. Ill 

body; and there is no place where this can be so beau- 
tifully illustrated and so completely practiced as be- 
tween father, mother and children. During the last 
year my nursery has indeed been a university to me 
in teaching me to give universally pure freedom to 
each, even my tiniest babe, and thereby finding it for 
myself, not only in my mind; but think what a rest 
and liberation to a tired mother there is in a family 
of self-ordered and freely determining little ones." 

If we are earnestly simple with our children, and 
take hold of every little and big thing we have to do, 
they will take hold with us and we will do it happily 
together, and thus come into a deeper understanding 
of each other and hence a deeper love. 

Children seldom think over the last thing or the 
next thing if the interest is keen; they weary more 
from being hindered and not allowed to be active. With 
very young children we must not make details for 
them to stumble over and petty laws for them to break. 
If the house is simple, and each thing a rounded 
thought carefully considered by the mother before it is 
expressed, the children go on and on from day to day 
keeping this sweet gem of self-activity till it blossoms 
into maturity. Every child has an inner unity, and if 
the mother is harmoniously minded and does not dis- 
turb it, it will grow into a heaven to keep always, and 
will not be left to be vainly hoped for. 



113 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

To the kindergartner it never matters who the 
child is; she just knows it is right and is naturally con- 
scious of truth; she believes in it, she works with its 
natural impulses and brings out full, conscious activ- 
ity, and that brings out harmony, joy and intelligence. 
The child feels it all and easily works and grows with- 
out realizing what problem he has passed over. 

A kindergartner or a mother must have a deep 
peace of mind, and be always refreshed and equal to 
her work if she would have good results. Just as soon 
as we get out of our own preconceived notions, and be- 
come conscious that there is truth in a child's mind, 
planted there originally, our work is quite easy. 

Froebel says: ''We disdain altogether to examine 
our own youth, from which we might learn so much 
to benefit our children. Yet this ambition, too, to turn 
back and observe our own youth, and to keep our soul 
fresh and warm in eternal youth, lies in the words of 
Jesus — 'Become as little children.' " And until we do 
become as little children ourselves, can we really open 
our hearts to them that they may come in and find 
our thought sweet and pure and inspiring? When we 
do they will bring us their richest gifts and purest 
thought and strongest love. They are always happy 
and active in the presence of their lovers; always wise, 
good and self-reliant if they are trusted and under- 
stood. 



CHILD REARING. 113 

To work with children we must be happy and always 
full of sunshine and the expression of it; we must give 
them a chance to live the full activity and freedom of 
life by enjoying it with them; and think what it will 
add to our own lives, and how it will lift the whole 
circle to thus dwell together! 

But you will haul me down from my flights to re- 
mind me that Child Rearing includes a few practical 
questions, such as dress, food, sleep, baths, flannels, 
etc. Indeed, I am well aware of this; but believe me 
when I say that when you aspire to simplicity in your 
family life in order to give your child's spiritual activ- 
ity the greatest possible chance, you will discover for 
yourself the most practical solution to most of these 
questions. 

Earnest mothers are everywhere battling with the 
question of dress, and have an inner sense of the 
artistic fitness which should belong to children's 
clothes. Every woman has an aesthetic instinct, 
which, though never brought to bear on canvas, can 
be and is expressed in her home decoration and her 
children's wardrobes. Who does not enjoy the sight 
of a beautifully dressed child more than a pretty pic- 
cure? This need not imply a beruffled or berib- 
boned gown and elaborately plumed hat; but a simple, 
sweet, childlike costume, which, if appropriate to the 
best uses of dress, will be truly artistic. Common 



114 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

sense is not, need not be, either crude or ugly in its 
expression, since that which is most natural is always 
most beautiful and graceful. With children we have 
a quite difficult task — that of dressing them so as to 
form tastes not yet matured, and at the same tim.e 
meeting the requirements of excessive activity and 
usefulness. There is a beautiful freedom in child ac- 
tivity, which demands a corresponding freedom in its 
clothing. Why should not the latter for this very 
reason, like the former, be of ever-increasing grace 
and beauty? 

Ellen Lee Wyman sums up the subject in her own 
enjoyable way: "Cultivate simplicity in every way. 
Take life and make life just as easy as you can. For 
one thing, do not ruffle your temper by ruffling your 
clothes. Make them simple, not plain and ugly; an 
unbecoming gannent to wear or to see is a great deal 
warmer than a harmonious one. But consider the 
sewing upon which, as a rule, too much time and 
strength are expended. Consider the laundrying; 
how would you like to iron it yourself?" 

The everyday dress of a child should not be so far 
removed froni prettiness that the occasional wearing 
of the Sunday gown is something unusual. Nature 
does not keep her best things for a better day, but 
wears her best, knowing that to-day is the best day. 
A simple but dainty dress, at the same time substantial 



CHILD REARING. 115 

and serviceable, can be designed for the daily wear of 
the little girls of the family, and abided by, until it 
brings lasting influence of fitness and niceness to the 
little wearers which would never be produced by end- 
less changes of more or less elaborate costumes. The 
beauty of use and the use of beauty are the doctrine 
of nature, and can be most satisfactorily applied in the 
matter of dressing nature's children. These should 
be as unconscious of their apparel as is the rose of its 
rich-hued petals, and they will be so in proportion as 
their garments are as fitted to so clothe them. Wise 
mothers will not discuss dress in general before their 
children, but will leave them in the unconscious en- 
joyment of what they have, ignorant of its value or 
elegance. 

A mother said not long ago: 'T am so sorry to see 
the snowy white guimpes and cashmere petticoats for 
children go out of style, for they were always so pic- 
turesque." Now, nothing that was ever truly artis- 
tic and picturesque can go out of style; and rather 
than follow some extremity of fashion, the sensible 
mother will hold to that which makes her child ap- 
pear externally clothed in all the sweetness and purity 
and freshness of its child nature. Above everything, 
let the dress in no way restrict the freedom or make 
the child conscious of its external appearance as 
something of more importance than its handsome 
deeds. 



116 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Babies' clothes should be simple and cheap, be- 
cause they are outgrown and outworn so quickly by 
the normal child. Have an idea in them — freedom. 
See that your child is happy, busy and free, and that 
his dress does not hamper him. 

As to winter clothing, my experience has proven 
that in our highly heated houses the children should 
be dressed lightly, but when they go out given es- 
pecially heavy wraps, from top to toe, and yet not so 
cumbersome as to hinder play. For both boys and 
girls knitted over-trousers are excellent, drawn on 
over the feet. I never used wool for undergarments 
with my children, since they were in such superb 
health. Yet this is no rule laid down by me; each 
mother should study her own child and its environ- 
ments. 

On the question of food, we aim to make our table 
simple and yet give great variety, and have gradually 
drifted into a purely vegetable diet, not from any par- 
ticular conviction, but because we have learned to 
prefer it and enjoy it. It certainly adds to the sim- 
plicity and makes it easier for our children to partake 
of everything with us. There is so much to read on 
this subject to-day that I will not attempt to go into it, 
but believe it is something every intelligent woman 
should carefully consider. 

As for the bath, let it be frequent, of short duration, 
and without extremes of temperature. Make it a mat- 



CHILD REARING. 117 

ter of cleanliness rather than a remedy. Let it become 
a fixed and regular thing, including teeth, nostrils, 
nails, etc. Have a set time for cleansing the hair and 
have it done regularly. If all this is established and 
thoroughly and faithfully carried out in earliest baby- 
hood, there will never be need of making laws and hav- 
ing a question about it. It will make cleanliness a 
habit with little "thought of the body" in it. 

The same may be said as regards sleep. Establish 
the hour and adhere to it. Have the bed clean and 
simple, and in the airiest, best part of the house. Never 
use the bed as a place of punishment; keep it as a 
sweet resting place which the child has well earned 
when sleep overtakes him. He will learn to respect it 
and establish a habit of regular hours of rest. Never 
permit him to lie awake in his bed for hours with noth- 
ing to take up his attention. It is a crime to allow 
a child to waste himself in vacuity. Make bedtime a 
happy time, but make it a rule to put lights out and 
settle down at exactly a certain position of the clock's 
hands. 

The question of playmates is often a serious one. 
I solve it in this way. I make myself responsible for 
every child within our neighborhood circle, and work 
for the proper environment of each. There is a kin- 
dergarten as a result, where the very youngest come 
together in sweet communion under the most perfect 



118 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

guardianship. The school is my dehght, and I know 
its playground. The mothers of our circle come to- 
gether regularly, and we work with united hearts that 
we may lend our children to each other as useful and 
beloved comrades. 

I can see no other way out of this queston of play- 
mates. Isolating the children only makes it worse. 
Reach out, take them under your own charge, let 
them play under your own eyes and assume the full 
responsibility, or some day you will be sorry. The 
wHhole danger of bad playmates would be done away 
with if we had kindergartens everywhere, and a kin- 
dergarten is a possibility everywhere if the mothers 
demand it and set about having it. The mother can- 
not do for her own flock; separated from the rest, what 
a kindergartner would do, and she is only making a 
greater danger through delay if she keeps her children 
away from their natural companions. We do not want 
to ask our children to pass through some of the 
wretched experiences we have known by having de- 
grading companions thrust suddenly upon them when 
th(ey are rushed off to school without proper prepara- 
tion. Froebel says: *'We can spare our children the 
details of experiments which mankind has passed 
through if we educate them aright. They must, in- 
deed, become wise through their own experience, but 
they need less rough experience." 



CHAPTER VIII. 
THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 



"Every age of life has its own peculiar claims and 
needs in respect to nurture and educational assistance, 
appropriate to it alone: what is lost to the nursling 
cannot be made good in later childhood, and so on. 
The child, and afterwards the youth, has other needs 
and makes other demands than the nursling, which 
must be met at their proper ages — not earlier, not later. 
Losses which have taken place in the first stage of life, 
in which the heart-leaves — the germ-leaves of the 
whole being — unfold, are never made up. If I pierce 
the young leaf of the shoot of a plant with the finest 
needle, the prick forms a knot which grows with the 
leaf, becomes harder and harder, and prevents it from 
obtaining its perfectly complete form. Something 
similar takes place after wounds which touch the tender 
germ of the human soul and injure the heart-leaves of 
its being." — FroebeL 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 

The question of punishment is one of deepest im- 
portance, for punishments of every phase and kind are 
indulged in constantly by nearly all parents. There 
are weighty arguments for the use of the majestic yet 
awful word ''must," yet we all confess it is not neces- 
sarily always connected with punishment; nor if rightly 
presented to the child does it need to be instilled 
through punishment- I believe that the bulk of all 
our punishments is due to mistaken methods or neg- 
lect in the plastic period in the past. 

There is a time in the affairs of every child, which, 
taken at its best, can be a time of permanent growth 
into self-control and out of bondage to the "must." 
Some of us do not believe in the natural depravity of 
childhood, and think the right thing can be made the 
thing most to be desired if wise help is given at the 
right time. But we have got to take development by 
the forelock if we would avoid shocking and disgrace- 
ful encounters with the rod. I have not a doubt but 
that each reader can point me out a score of excep- 



122 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

tions, and tell of children who are ''simply incorrigi- 
ble," etc., but still I contend that with sufficient appli- 
cation of ''prevention" there would have been much 
less need for "cure." Many of us are whipping out 
of our children things that we should have whipped 
out of ourselves before they were here. 

How many m.others are thoroughly satisfied that 
they are capable of governing themselves before they 
try to govern their children, and how many more con- 
sider they are completely obedient to laws divine and 
human before they demand strict obedience from their 
children? for they are sure to find us out if we are 
hypocrites. 

This question of punishment will forever exercise 
parents, and there will never be discovered a just and 
equitable set of punishments if we search forever. My 
experience has been that right here the kindergarten 
comes to our rescue. If it were possible for each child 
to be daily separated for a certain number of hours 
from the mother, even at the age of two, and put in 
a little world of children of his own age, he would 
learn the sharing, the obedience and yielding to "must" 
that come from living together with many of our own 
age, instead of fighting out each little point in a hand- 
to-hand combat with his mother, who has often paved 
the way to disobedience through harassing him. 

My babies, who were sent to kindergarten very 



THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 133 

young, so young that they learned their first words 
and lessons there, came into a deep sense of obedience 
and looking out tor each other's rights without any 
conscious effort on the part of anyone. Of course, it 
was in an ideal and thoroughly graded kindergarten, 
with a specially prepared helper for the babies. 

In a large family, with the children all close together 
and a wise mother-head, this same result will be ac- 
complished; but so long as our children are compelled 
to stand out in single combat with the parent, who is 
perhaps not overly self-controlled, there will be a de- 
mand for special advice on punishment. 

Punishment is very rarely necessary in a good kin- 
dergarten where the right constructive work is being 
done, and the same can be said of the home. I confess 
that I have a very small repertory of punishments, 
small in comparison to the several thousands of pecul- 
iar weaknesses that childhood seems to be heir to — 
if one may judge from the mothers' remarks. They 
do not realize how many of the faults of their children 
they would refrain from mentioning if they knew how 
the listening kindergartner viewed them, but was too 
polite to point to their source. 

Froebel believed that everything opposite to the nat- 
ural (which is the spiritual) must be taught the child; 
that he is original and ever true to his own source un- 
less educated away from it. As mothers we are only 



124 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

too willing to grasp at this as a revelation; we must 
never forget that children come out of the depths that 
lie behind our own natures. We should hold our 
children in the thought of freedom from shortcomings 
in our own minds, allowing no sense of limitations to 
appear as lasting and unconquerable. We must seek 
our way out of them, searching diligently for the 
thing which will rightly counteract the deficiency; 
and then only have we done our smallest duty toward 
our little ones. 

Froebel says: "Punishment, especially by words, 
very often teaches children, or at least brings to their 
notice, faults from which they were wholly free." 
And again, "Fathers, parents, let us see that our chil- 
dren may not suffer from our deficiencies. What we 
no longer possess — the all-quickening, creative power 
of child-life — let it again be translated from their lives 
into ours." 

How Froebel pleads for the recognition of the 
child's rights! He says: "Are not childhood and 
youth, are not the longings, the hope and faith of 
childhood and youth, the exhaustless foundations of 
our strength, courage and perseverance in later life?" 

We do not want to whip it out of them; we do not 
want to break their wills which some day must help 
them to determine all things, nor do we want to pam- 
per that hereditary selfishness which we have fos- 



THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 125 

tered in them and which seems to baffle us. There 
is only one safe ground, and it is this: separate from 
out the seeming quandary which the child presents 
you the real central, radiating, loving child of God. 
See it well defined, and then be noble and good 
enough to occupy the same house with it and be will- 
ing to admit that there is equal responsibility on the 
part of both; live together, and live closely together. 
There are no rules to lay down; there is no prescrip- 
tion that will work the same in any two cases, and 
the loving mother and father will ask for none. They 
will dare to live with their children, and together seek 
lives of activity that shall harmoniously work for the 
good of the whole. 

If punishment is ever necessary it ought as near as 
possible to come about through the misdeed itself. 
As the reward itself follows closely upon the good 
act, so should also the punishment follow closely and 
be a direct outcome of the misdeed, else the child, 
lacking the logic to put both ends together, will fail 
to learn his lesson — and by the way, there must al- 
ways be a lesson in the punishment ur it is wasted 
torture. 

We do not punish a child simply to get even with 
him, but to teach him something which we have 
failed to teach in a better way. Punishment is always 
a bringing up of the balance somewhere — the balance 



126 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

which we have failed to secure through our own igno- 
rance of the right laws for governing ourselves and 
our children. If we elders would always look closely 
into conditions and our own state of mind, we would 
seldom fail to find the real reason for a child's misbe- 
havior, and especially we would never indulge in the 
unjust feeling that we would like to give a child a 
good spanking just to relieve our own minds. It ispure 
selfishness to punish the child when it is we that are 
lacking. "Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he 
that taketh a city," and especially great is the parent 
who governs himself in the presence of unruly chil- 
dren. How specially vexing it is to have one's own 
flesh and blood arise and taunt us with our own short- 
comings by repeating them. When we see our own 
weaknesses masquerading in amateur array the insult 
and the menace are great. Punishment is often ad- 
ministered in a sort of double revenge — revenge on 
the child for daring to repeat the error, and revenge 
on one's self for allowing the error to be repeated in 
the child. It is only added weakness on the part of 
the parent to succumb to the temptation. 

But how shall a parent, the mother especially, who 
has not this control, begin? I should say — stop 
short and stop suddenly in all your old methods, and 
learn all over again. ''Yes," you will say, "but in the 
meantime the children will be neglected." A little 



THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 127 

wholesome neglect may be what they need after too 
much manipulation of their rights. Neglect is cer- 
tainly better than hurtful surveillance. Again, just 
to think twice and question your old way of punish- 
ment will be a wonderful beginning. And even if 
you do punish the child, take the affair to heart after- 
wards and study over it in the light of what you know 
is truth. Talk it over with the father. The man's 
sense of justice and right is often the keenest sense 
he has, and it is well to let the children come in con- 
tact with it; too much woman government for both 
girls and boys is not the best thing, nor is it the best 
thing for the father to be entirely relieved. It is al- 
ways a wise thing to discuss naughty acts with the 
child himself, and together conclude to bring it up 
when father comes home, for final decision what is 
best to do. 

Children will often discipline themselves if allowed 
to, and especially if we calmly talk the matter over 
with them. One child scarcely two years old sug- 
gested that her hands had better "go in the closet" 
when they slapped sister, and forthwith a pair of long 
stockings were drawn on and pinned to the shoul- 
ders. They staid there the better part of the day, 
and finally the little one came and declared that the 
hands were ready to 'love baby now," and since then 
many a time have I seen these self-same hands, raised 



128 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

to push or snatch, fall gently of their own accord, and 
instead baby was requested most lovingly to accord 
to her wishes. In the matter of discipline, as in every- 
thing else, much depends upon an early start; and an 
early start means — to begin with ourselves and our 
grandparents. 

Some argue in favor of whippings in special cases; 
others recommend them just to turn the tide in an 
otherwise incorrigible situation — to make a break in 
the clouds, as it were. 

Mrs. Ellen I.ee ^^^'man says: "There are times — 
fathers and motheis know such times — when a spank- 
ing administered in proper spirit, and in proper parts 
and proportion, is highly beneficial, not to say indis- 
pensable. It reallv seems to change and stimulate 
the circulation. You all know what a clearing effect 
usually follows such an experience; but let the expe- 
rience be rare enough to be impressive, and do not 
threaten it unless you mean it." Remember, I do not 
quote this because I fully believe it. I consider that 
whippings are always a makeshift; a substitute for 
intelligence and self-control. 

Argue and consider as long as we please, the whole 
matter of punishment must again and again be 
summed up by saying, "He who would command must 
first learn to obey," and parents, when they recognize 
how constant is iheir responsibility, had better be 



THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 129 

about it and learn self-command, even to the neglect 
of every other duty. It is better that our children 
have self-control than that they have bread, and they 
will never gain it except through the noble example 
of the parents whom their young hearts adore. 



CHAPTER IX. 
A KINDERGARTEN HOME 



''What are fhe external conditions of a family, and 
who are its most important members? Father, mother, 
children, and servants. What, now, must be the con- 
dition of a family if it is to prepare and develop the 
human being for the attainment of the highest and 
ultimate purpose of life? They must know this ulti- 
mate purpose and the means for its attainment; they 
must be agreed concerning the ways and means to be 
adopted; they must aid and support each other in all 
they do, having only this purpose in view. 

"For the child, therefore, the life of his own family 
becomes itself an external thing and a type of life. 
Parents should consider this fact: that the child in his 
own life would fain represent this type in the purity, 
harmony, and efficiency in which he sees it." — Froebel. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 

If life is to be made a whole, a rounded and perfect 
thing to our children, we can leave nothing out of the 
reckoning. To give them perfect lives we must order 
all our ways and doings after a perfect pattern. The 
kindergarten gives us such a complete picture of real 
life, that I am fond of modeling the home after it. 

Were you ever in a kindergarten home, with a kin- 
dergarten mother at the head of it, with the laws that 
govern the kindergarten in force from garret to cel- 
lar, and from kitchen to nursery? 

A real kindergarten home, of course, has a great 
many children in it, and hence a great many problems ; 
and yet we must admit that problems when they are 
solved oniy lend the light and shade which are neces- 
sary to make family life interesting. 

If you have only one child or few, I should advise 
that you borrow some, especially if there is no kinder- 
garten in your community, that your children may 
have the necessary companionship which every intel- 
ligent mother will confess is so helpful. But even if 

133 



134 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

there is a kindergarten in your midst it is most essen- 
tial that the home be foimded on Uke principles, else 
half the good effect of the morning will be obliterated 
overnight. It is the cry of the school everywhere that 
the home does not cooperate. 

How few of us reach out in sympathy with that 
great body, the teachers, who are working for the sal- 
vation of the children and struggling with things that 
the homes should have mastered long before the chil- 
dren were let loose upon them in droves of sixty or 
more, to be managed by one head and one pair of 
hands at very small pay. 

If we would have obedient, inspired and happy chil- 
dren, we must definitely plant our homes with some 
high principle, and as parents, act and live and co- 
operate with the powers at work; for humanity cannot 
have makeshift homes and have anything but fail- 
ures for children. The kindergarten gives us such a 
home-building principle, and yet if I were asked to 
define it, it would be almost impossible. 

If we read Froebel we are filled with the idea that 
family and home should symbolize and actually be 
heaven on earth. And, really, is it not this we pray for 
constantly? Yet this kingdom will never come until 
we individually go about establishing it in our homes, 
where every room should be the throne room and 
every inmate in the presence of the holiest things of 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 135 

life. We get a glimpse of ideal family life in the kin- 
dergarten, and if we have nothing better to build up 
to in our homes, we can make no mistake in aiming 
at that. Let us visit the kindergarten and learn its 
simplest lessons and emulate them in our homes. 

In the perfect home there is no happier place than the 
kitchen. It ought to be full of interest to each mem- 
ber of the family. It always is if mother does the 
work. Yet the mother should have cooperation, if 
possible. She should also have the best of outside 
help, and pay well for it, even if obliged to economize 
somewhere else; but this help should never be an ex- 
cuse for want of cooperation on the part of any one 
member of the family. The home is not a home, 
nor the family a family, unless each one does his share. 
And outside help will not be on the outside long if all 
work together; in fact, any assistant in the ideal home 
should be worthy of the confidence of the home and of 
being one of the family. 

If we expect intelligent help in our homes, we must 
set about making it so, even if we have to start a 
course of special training; for very few women bring 
to the work of the kitchen the inspiration that is neces- 
sary to make it the element it should be in the develop- 
ment of our children. We should study our helpers 
and take up with them inspiring things to read and 
think about. The best of us wear out without inspira- 



136 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

tion, and we need more of it in the kitchen than in any 
other part of the house. Above all, appreciation and 
love should be rendered the one who gives us the 
hardest, hence the most royal, service. We should be 
interested in her welfare and be as solicitously her 
friend as we are that of any other member of the fam- 
ily. She will be either helpful or harmful to the whole 
family, so it behooves us to take our servants into our 
hearts. 

Suppose we fail several times in this stupendous 
servants' problem; let us not give up the possibility 
of success until we have tried our best. We must try 
over and over again, for we who are home-makers and 
mothers can never shift this responsibility so long as 
we need help. The longer we entertain failures and 
makeshifts, the longer we rob our dear ones of 
their proper home environments and happiness. The 
mother is bound to have to be the mother of every- 
thing in her home. If she is not mothering her prem- 
ises she will have to patrol them. The nearer she 
comes to making her help the assistant mother, the 
more successful and well oiled will be her kitchen 
department, and every other department of the house. 

Make a thorough business arrangement with each 
one that works for you. Do not call the woman who 
does your work a servant, nor by that detestable word 
''maid." Call her your housekeeper, or, if you will. 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 137 

your house-helper. In the first place, have some one 
you can respect, and then respect her in her position, 
and in her work; also her time and development 
should be respected, and unless she has been spoiled 
before she came to you, you are bound to have satis- 
factory results if you work along these lines, for I have 
proven it. 

I have had many women working for me in my 
home and in my office. All are treated with equal re- 
spect, yet if asked to discriminate I would, without 
question, be in favor of the one who helps in my home- 
making — yes, in my kitchen; for is not that work 
more in touch with my family than the keeping of my 
books? We do not half respect ourselves and our 
work as mothers, if we degrade the all-important 
work of our first assistant, the cook, housekeeper, or 
whatever we may call her; we degrade our whole house 
in degrading her. 

With happy cooperative service, think what a 
choice place is the kitchen, with all its manifold work. 
It is really the workshop of the house, the most inter- 
esting of all to the child; the place where the bulk of 
the comforts of the family is fashioned. 

We all love the kitchen at our house. It is such a 
busy, happy place that it is hard to keep away from 
it; and on a winter's night what a cozy spot in which 
to draw the pine table up to the stove with its rousing 



138 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

fire — certainly more enjoyable and poetic than a radi- 
ator, and just the right place to pick nuts and eat ap- 
ples. 

I do not wish to shock the sensibilities of my refined 
mother friends, but I must tell the truth; our entire 
family, actually, even the blessed woman who cooks 
the food, all sit down at the same table ! Each one has 
duties of service toward all, or special service toward 
a child. Good yet unafifected table manners are de- 
manded. Each thing is done from the basis of love 
and cooperation. 

To have the whole family eat at one time demands 
simplicity, which is good for the health, and makes 
elaborate service impossible, thus saving time for 
more profitable use. Yet if we realized that for every 
grain of simplicity we practice we are blessed with a 
pound of freedom, and our road to spirituality is 
thereby widened, we would not hesitate to cut ofl the 
non-essentials, and take into our loving confidence 
and break bread with those who have rendered us the 
truest service. Let those who would search more 
deeply into this suggestion of life's simpHcities, read 
the last chapters of Tolstoi's "Childhood, Boyhood 
and Youth," also Edward Carpenter's (the great En- 
glish socialist) "England's Ideals," especially the chap- 
ters on "Desirable Mansions" and the "Simplifica- 
tion of Life." 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 139 

Such a home — although it may seem to lose much 
that the usual conventional home gives, in smooth 
running elegance — think what an oasis in the social 
desert it is — a spot where children and happiness and 
brotherhood are the highest concern! Think of a 
jaded society woman coming into such a home ! what a 
fresh thought it would give her; and if there were one 
spark of the natural mother left, it would be fanned 
into new life and ideals for her own family. 

Let us go on to the nursery, that place of highest 
importance to the real home (the word "home" does 
not apply to a house where there is no child and no 
nursery). The kitchen and nursery are usually the 
two rooms which receive the least attention, whereas 
they are the most important departments of the house. 
The place where the babies sleep should be the fresh- 
est, brightest, airiest room in the house, and if possi- 
ble to avoid it should never be played in; the playroom 
should be in some other part of the house. 

Mrs. Wyman has contributed such a complete 
recipe for an ideal playroom to the pages of Child- 
Garden, that with her consent I repeat it here, believ- 
ing that a good thing once said should be forever re- 
membered: 

''Have your children a playroom — a day nursery? 
If they have not, give yourself no rest until you have 
provided them with one of the most important ele- 



140 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

ments for their proper development. Despoil your 
guest chamber, sleep in your parlor, eat in your 
kitchen — provide it in some way, for it is a necessity. 

"The children must have a good, fresh room to go 
into every morning, where they can have all their 
treasures, all their plans and their own sweet wills; 
for their own wills are sweet when they are not 
rubbed and rufifled by too much contact or restraint. 

"Children should not be always in evidence; house- 
hold matters should be arranged for them, not disar- 
ranged by them. 

"Fresh, pure air is just as necessary as fresh, pure 
food. Do not stint the dear little growing bodies in 
either. Let the room be sunny; let the sun shine in 
all day through windows unencumbered by draper- 
ies; let the children look out through these windows, 
too; the view is their vista of the outside world. 
Have no dust-collecting, germ-dispensing carpet on 
the floor. If you cannot have hardwood, and will not 
have paint, cover your floor with a denim and scatter 
rugs about. 

"Have plenty of shelves. Put them half way up 
the windows for the plants; they like the warm, upper 
air of the room, and they make pretty hanging gar- 
dens distilling their sweet influence. The little pots 
can often come down to the window-sill to see the 
little owners, and tell a story of growth. Put shelves 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 141 

all about in reach of little hands, that they may learn 
how to keep books and playthings in order and in 
place. 

''Have a 'livery stable' or 'farmyard' in some cor- 
ner for all the toy animals, carts, etc. Have window- 
seat boxes for the blocks and loose playthings. Have 
low table, little chairs, big cushions; everything for 
comfort; pretty and nice enough to be cared for, not 
too nice to be enjoyed. 

"On the walls have such pictures as you would 
wish to have dwell in the pure memories of your in- 
nocent children, beautiful in subject, good in execu- 
tion. Let the children put up their own pictures, 
their own cuttings and paintings; these can be 
fastened without much harm with tiny tacks on the 
woodwork or doors, or by pins to a cord. 

"I know of one playroom where one door is de- 
voted to copies of the Madonna and Christ-Child. 
The children are quick to recognize this supreme sub- 
ject, and unconsciously become familiar with distinc- 
tions and good points in some of the masterpieces. 

"In this child-world let each little member have 
his or her own domain, which shall be sacredly re- 
garded and unmolested by others. 

"Let the decorations, occupations, and atmosphere 
of this room harmonize with the spirit of the season. 

"Do you see how work and play may be blended, 



142 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

and tend in the one direction for months of happy, 
busy, home days? There will be no strain, no excite- 
ment, no nonsense, but vivid impressions in the little 
minds and the beginning of loyalty in the little hearts! 

"Oh, mothers, does it not thrill you to think of the 
great, grand work that is ours in training up these 
future citizens of our glorious country? Let us live 
with our children." 

Passing by the natural requirements of a nursery, 
let us discuss that higher atmosphere which should 
permeate it for the truest good of the child. 

The nursery is the home's holy of holies, and just as 
we draw upon our highest sense of the beautiful in 
decorating a sanctuary where the soul is to be refreshed 
and nurtured, so in making a room fit for the occu- 
pancy of the little child must we exercise the rarest 
judgment in selection, that it may most fittingly lend 
the right thought and idea to the grasping young 
mind, so open to impressions. 

The first thing to work for in planning the nursery 
is, that the whole room express one rounded idea, and 
that a simple one. It should not be furnished com- 
plete, and then the child placed in it and asked to be 
content. Rather have but the bare necessities to be- 
gin with, and let its completeness and beauty be a 
growth parallel with the child's own growth and 
developing desires. 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 143 

The leading of the child into real life is the daily 
work and business of the family, and the nursery is 
the workshop wherein the heart of the family is the 
furnace, and the character of the young inmates to be 
welded into perfection is the labor. 

If the part of the house chosen for the nursery is 
well lighted it can take upon its walls delicate tints in 
grays, olives, slates or russets. If it is not as light 
as might be desirable, it needs more brilliantly colored 
finishings, little drapery and plenty of white. What- 
ever the scheme of color may be, it should be carried 
to completeness. But explicit suggestion for the 
decoration of the nursery is unnecessary, since every 
mother must meet her own emergencies in supplying 
wholesome surroundings for her child. A few simple 
principles carried into detail will solve her problems 
for her, and let these guiding ideas be simplicity, good 
coloring, and harmonious relation of each to all. 

The walls and pictures of the children's room are of 
more importance than even those of the drawing- 
room. The floors, ornaments, furniture, everything in 
the nursery, should be chosen with even more critical 
taste and discrimination than the belongings of that 
more external part of the house open to society, which 
often receive the most attention. 

Pictures? Rather have none than poor ones. 
Children should grow thoroughly in love with a pic- 



144 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

ture before it is hung on the walls ; let it be their own 
in every sense of the word. Let them be rare art 
collectors, studying and accumulating according to 
the dictates of their own love of the idea contained in 
each picture ere it is allowed to be placed for daily 
scrutiny. The choice, of course, naturally grows out 
of such pictures as are placed before them, and through 
the story connected with them. Gradually the walls 
fill with wonderful stories which the young imagina- 
tions hear over and over again, and which the beauty- 
loving eyes never tire of seeing. Rather than poor 
coloring have none at all; the good brown tones of 
the photo reproduction of the masters may always be 
had, as well as simple etchings. 

Studies in mother-and-child life, animal-family life, 
nature — simple and in her milder forms — are the best 
choice of subjects to place within the child's reach. 
Very pretty flower and bird studies may be had nowa- 
days, such as are perfect gems of tint and natural pose; 
framed in delicate white or unfinished wood they make 
the purest of ornaments. 

The furniture of the child's room should be simple, 
and no piece without its purpose. Books are neces- 
sary, but not too many; a few well-illustrated volumes 
of child literature make a good suggestion of what 
comes after the nursery, and should be added to with 
careful thought. The nursery should not be too far 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 145 

from the library, for we can scarcely overestimate the 
unconscious development it is to the child to merely 
live among books. 

As for the parlors, they should be as beautiful as 
possible without interfering with the simpHcity and 
indestructibility of the contents. Have no parlor at 
all, rather than have the whole family standing in awe 
of it. Your company would prefer to come into a 
home than into a lumber room full of furniture and 
dry goods. 

Before you add a single piece of furniture to com- 
plicate the dusting and housework question, ask if 
you are doing your full duty for the spiritual good of 
your family. Perhaps the price of that easy-chair you 
desire would pay a year's tuition for some child at a 
kindergarten, and better its life forever — your own 
child or some one else's for whom you are partly re- 
sponsible; what matters? Is your hand in the pro- 
gressive movements of the neighborhood? If not, 
sit on a wooden bench and save your dollars for prog- 
ress. 

It is a question if any of us deserve parlors and ease. 
I am willing to throw mine away if it prove a stumbling- 
block to even my humblest neighbor, or make my 
beloved friends envy me my furniture instead of ac- 
cepting my friendship. A parlor is a symbol of aris- 
tocracy, something that has no particular use except 



146 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

to demand service and put barriers between us and 
our fellow men. It certainly makes the children of the 
family very inconvenient at times. I say, let the par- 
lor be the last department of the house to be thought 
of; it certainly has the least to do with the happiness 
and cultivation of our children. 

Of mother's and father's room I need not speak; 
that is a place where we must live out our own ideals. 
One thing only; let me beg that it be not a room from 
which any are proscribed, or where any inmate must 
feel restraint. Let it not be a room to shut oneself 
up in. Do not go to it when you feel ill at ease or 
depressed; stay among your loving friends and they 
will do you more good than solitude. Do not use 
your room as the scolding place or the confessional. 
Make it the cheery, cozy spot where mother may be 
found her happiest, sunniest self. 

I would suggest to every mother who must have 
some one to help her with her children, that she take 
a kindergartner into her home if possible. Her 
thought will infect the whole family. If you cannot 
afiford to pay a full salary and do justice to the worth 
you are receiving, give a kindergartner her board and 
have a certain few hours of her time. But be sure 
you get one whose training has been of the heart as 
well as of the head and hand, and then you yourself 
reach into her thought, her study, and her life, and 
together be mothers to the children, 



A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 147 

Each one of us may truly have a kindergarten home 
and live out Froebel's liberating doctrines right in the 
midst of every duty; and I have only suggested the 
SA^eet returns that will be sure to follow. 



CHAPTER X. 
LOVE THY BROTHER. 



''If, then, true brotherly love, true siniiplicity, trust- 
ful and truly loving gentleness, friendliness, forbear- 
ance, and respect for the companion and fellow man is 
to prevail again, this can be accomplished only by 
addressing ourselves to the feeling of common sym- 
pathy lingering — however much or little of it there 
may still be left — in the heart of every human being, 
and cultivating it with the greatest care. This would 
surely soon give back to us what we now miss so pain- 
fully in domestic, social, and religious life," — Froebel. 



CHAPTER X. 

LOVE THY BROTHER. 

Until true Brotherhood is understood, and until we 
love our brother with an undying love, we can know 
no religion and cannot know God. 

So long as we are living to ourselves alone, or those 
of our own circle who love us in return, we have not 
fulfilled the simple and grand laws of Christ. Within 
the sanctified walls of the family we have our highest 
opportunity to live for each other and to receive the 
truest discipline for the larger practice of the com- 
mand, "Love ye one another." The mother and 
father are certainly asked to sacrifice every day and 
every hour, and the child, too, if it is to expand into 
a beautiful and satisfied character, must be taught 
these deepest and most lasting lessons by practicing 
at home. And all this is but a preparation for our 
larger life, out in the brotherhood — in the kingdom 
which Christ came to establish. We must remember 
that the brotherhood begins for us right at our door- 
step, over our back fence, with our nearest neighbor. 
And that is the great test; we can never live a life of 

151 



153 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

breadth and satisfaction in the most ideal surround- 
ings until we live beyond self and self-interests. If 
we could only work together with a definite plan 
through home, school and church, we would receive 
quick results with our children, whose plastic hearts 
are easily set aglow with a consuming love. We as 
mothers, neighborhood workers and social elements 
are bound to be interested in these movements, for 
everywhere we find unideal conditions to contend with. 

When we think that only as we come into a warm 
and cooperative brotherhood life do we approach the 
Christian life, some of us are urged, at any sacrifice, to 
work to establish ourselves in pure brotherly relation- 
ship. The prophecy of to-day is that the word 
"brotherhood" will be the keynote of the religion of 
the twentieth century. 

We hear more and more of the organized work 
going on all around us toward the fuller brotherhood 
and better neighborhood life. Perhaps the foremost 
in all these movements is the work of the social settle- 
ment. Hardly a city of any size but has taken up 
work along these lines. All classes and kinds of peo- 
ple are lending themselves to the work; not as a mis- 
sion or charity, but in brotherly and sisterly love they 
are reaching out into neighborhoods that seem quite 
torn asunder by hard conditions. Lack of sympathy, 
lack of common interests, and gross selfishness seem 



LOVE THY BROTHER. 153 

to be sapping the heart out of many of our best neigh- 
borhoods, and are the causes of the worst poverty of 
heart among the rich as well as the poor. 

We have in our midst to-day a small army of worthy 
disciples of Christ who have sold all that they had 
and have taken up his cross — men and women who 
have gone down into the valleys of poverty and sin, 
taken up their abode there and are now working for 
sweet brotherhood. 

Some have asked me what this social-settlement 
work is. I want to tell you how I learned what it is 
and perhaps you may become interested in the same 
way: 

Having several relatives and close connections in 
actual settlement work, I was often called upon to be 
interested, and of course the natural thing to do was 
to give something and feel that I had done my share. 
Our home is in one of those suburban spots favored 
in summer with a combination of both country and 
city advantages, right in the heart of a beautiful wood; 
so I suggested that there might be an enjoyable picnic 
given to some of the women of toil in the crowded 
neighborhoods. A plan was made, but many difficul- 
ties were encountered. Nearly all the women worked 
for the support of their families; to leave their "job" 
would be almost fatal. In several cases they were 
obliged to hire substitutes and lose their day's earn- 



154 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

ings; but they strained every nerve to enjoy this one 
day of sunshine and joy. They came; there were 
nearly a hundred in all. And such an arrival into the 
midst of an easy-going, aristocratic suburb! They 
had on their very best clothes and their happiest faces. 
The majority of them spoke German, and what joy to 
be welcomed in their own tongue! Willing arms 
were stretched to carry their babies, and a number of 
baby cabs awaited the little ones. They sat down 
under the spreading oaks, weary but glad, and imme- 
diately the happy time began. The babies played, and 
the mothers rested and drank in their fill of freedom 
and fresh air. 

Several German-speaking matrons were invited to 
assist — women of great dignity and sweetness of char- 
acter, and they formed into small groups and told 
stories and chatted about their homes and their chil- 
dren and their hardships. One very dear woman did 
much to cheer and encourage them, and as they 
glanced at the house over the way, and realized the 
luxury of having a spot to call one's own, with a gar- 
den, cow and other signs of plenty, they spoke with 
deep anguish of their lot. And the loving woman 
shook her head, and told them that the mother in that 
home also worked day by day in the crowded city; 
that she, too, had her heavy cares, and she, too, had 
her sorrows; that after all, life was very much the 



LOVE THY BROTHER. 155 

same thing with us all, and our happiness depended 
on our content of heart, not on our possessions. 

And how these poor laboring women flocked about 
me! Did I really work? Did I really struggle as they 
did? And how their hearts went out to me! I never 
had felt such real sympathy from anyone. They loved 
me with the love of equals, nor did they hesitate to 
tell their love, to press my hand; and when the fare- 
well time came each in turn kissed me with a sister's 
kiss, as we said good-bye at the station, all rushing 
and crowding upon me with arms full of babies. 

Many reported afterward that it was their one holi- 
day in years and they deemed it no hardship to carry 
along two or three children; indeed, they would will- 
ingly strain themselves again and again to give this 
sweet day to their wan babies. 

I had not anticipated this flood of feeling and affec- 
tion. I had not dreamed of their bringing me any- 
thing and leaving me behind an expanded and elevated 
woman. I had only anticipated indulging myself in 
sweet charity, and I was compelled to be a neighbor 
and sister, or be false to the proffered love. 

I cannot tell you how much I grew that day. It 
was the deepest religious experience of my life. No 
one will ever have to define brotherhood to me, nor 
inform me again of what a social settlement consists. 
And think how ready I must be not to offend in the 



156 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

least; for any day I may run across some one of these 
beloved friends scrubbing on her knees in a restaurant, 
or peering from the windows of some saloon where 
she is cleaning to put bread into her children's mouths. 
I must be ready with a heart purified of pride and 
meet them with gladness, for they are my sisters; 
they and their children have been my guests. They had 
taught me lessons second only to those taught by the 
Master himself — lessons in endurance, patience, and 
that greatest lesson of all, that in the kingdom of the 
heart there is no respect for persons. I long to meet 
these same dear women many times again, and shall 
endeavor to do so, for their welfare has become of 
the deepest interest to me. 

But we need not reach beyond our own immedi- 
ate surroundings to experience all these things. So 
long as in our own neighborhood there are struggling 
mothers in whom we lack interest, who are isolated 
from our circle, there is the same work to do and the 
same opportunity for self-expansion in that work. We 
must learn the full meaning of a settlement worker's 
favorite proverb: "It is easy to talk of love and religion, 
but it is hard to do and to be love and religion. And 
where the easy way of mere talk fails, the hard and 
loving way of being always succeeds In the end." 

In fact, if you look about you, you will find that 
there are very much worse situations to face in so- 



LOVE THY BROTHER. 157 

called "high circles" than in the lower ones — selfish- 
ness, which makes them sit and hug their plenty while 
their lowly neighbors at the foot of the hill are in 
want, and which allows them to swell themselves with 
over-feeding when the little children of these neigh- 
bors are hungry. When every man lives to himself 
alone, as in the usual well-to-do neighborhood, we 
have such pictures as the following, which have come 
within our actual experience: A rich man leaving his 
coal bill to a poor widow unpaid for several years, and 
then trying to palm off an old carriage on her for 
payment, when her children were in crying need of 
the commonest necessities of life, and the rest of the 
neighbors scouring the neighborhood for old clothes 
and food remnants to help keep her eight fatherless 
children alive, and then going to the rich man's house 
in the evening, knowing all this, yet playing cards and 
complimenting each other and never saying a word 
in remonstrance. Another suggestive picture might 
be drawn of fathers and mothers who are willing to 
send their children to kindergarten, but are not willing 
to pay their full share of the expense, though they 
are quite able to do so, but instead get the tuition 
as cheaply as possible, allowing the loving worker to 
struggle along and do the best she is able, and at the 
end of the year make up the deficit out of her own 
pocket, thus virtually paying for the good the parents 



158 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

have received and which they should pay for to avoid 
accepting charity at the expense of some one who is 
not able to bestow it. 

I receive so many pitiful letters from kindergartners 
who go out in the pioneer spirit and love of. childhood, 
and open a kindergarten work in a dead neighbor- 
hood, and the cry is, "The mothers are not interested." 
"They care more for cards than their children, or any- 
thing else." "Mothers do not want to be helped," etc. 

There seems to be a fatal paralysis settled down on 
motherhood, the land over. What is it and why is it? 
We have churches everywhere; we have schools every- 
where; can it be that they are not leading women out 
of their limitations? Can it be that the avenues of civ- 
ilization only enslave and lead us into weakness in- 
stead of strength? I remember calling on one lady 
and finding her out at "the card party," and the chil- 
dren down in the basement with an ignorant and low- 
minded woman, who had been hired because she would 
work cheap. But you see having the children in the 
basement was safer for the parlor furniture, and they 
enjoyed the vulgar stories and rude behavior. Nor 
could I say a word, either; for think how hateful it 
would have been for me, how unneighborly, to go even 
kindly to her for the sake of her children and speak 
out! And then there is the Lord's work that always 
comes out short at the end of the year. 



LOVE THY BROTHER. 159 

The least obligation incurred on the part of any- 
body, and she must be offered some tempting bait or 
some pie and coffee, to be charmed into giving her 
mite to carry on what at least stands for spiritual 
works! When will we be honest? When make life 
something besides a game of grab? 

As I go about from one community to another, and 
hear the words from house to house, I find the same 
tales of woe everywhere — lack of cooperation, lack of 
delight in paying for the real things of life, and a 
rushing after sensations and frivolities. And yet we 
find the women are busy — are working — never having 
time to stop for a minute; but see if, after all, their 
busyness is bringing the highest return. They tell 
us how they are worked to death in church and char- 
ity work. They do not stop to question if there be 
a false basis to their charity and spirituality. They 
do not ask if they are just jogging along and rehashing 
the old pat traditions and trite religion of their 
forefathers, and not applying any of it to everyday 
problems. 

Until our church and charity workers take hold of 
the more constructive work they are bound to be 
pulling uphill, and to make a weak showing at the end 
of their year, together with a big deficit. 

In the church about forty minutes a week are 
given to child culture — the child, that wonderful be- 



160 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

ing from whom comes our greatest chance of regen- 
eration! How many ministers know through experi- 
ence what the proper spiritual training of the child 
is? How many have made a study of the true culture 
of the young? How many are questioning it even? 
The most rationally Christian and deepest-laid scheme 
a church could adopt would be to support kindergar- 
tens, and take every child under its wing for fifteen 
hours each week. It would then be a co-worker with 
the home and the school for the training of the child 
in the way it should go; and what mother church mem- 
ber would not appreciate it? What father church mem- 
ber would not pay his church subscription with greater 
readiness? 

But we must begin with our own home and family 
first, and from that center reach out and see to it that 
we do not fail to expand into the larger family. There 
can always be a few of us gathered together in this con- 
structive work. 

I speak of the matter of organized work specifically 
in another chapter, and make suggestions as to how 
to practically commence sociological work in your 
own neighborhood; and I beg of every mother who 
reads these pages that she will not read them merely, 
having found a little help for her own flock, but that 
if she has read with any enlarging of the heart she 
will reach out for the uplifting of childhood every- 



LOVE THY BROTHER. 161 

where, thus broadening her work, which in the end 
will be of greater value to her own children. To make 
a more beautiful world for them to live in is of the ut- 
most importance, for some day they will not have the 
warm hand of the father and mother to minister and 
control. 



CHAPTER XL 
MARRIAGE IDEALS. 



"Harmony in family life is the deepest germ, of a 
genuine religious sentiment. 

"It is and remains forever true that, in purely and 
distinctly human relations, particularly in parental and 
spiritual human relations, there are mirrored the rela- 
tions between the divine and the human, between God 
and man. Those pure relations of man to man reveal 
to us the relations of God to man and man to God." — 
Froebel. 



CHAPTER XL 

MARRIAGE IDEALS 

The poet Browning has put it — a man's wife should 
be his star of aspiration; so likewise a woman's hus- 
band should be her sun, whose light and intelligence 
are her directing genius. We catch this beautiful 
vision throughout the pages of this poet, who not only 
dreamed and rhymed, but lived the ideal marriage. 

Why should we live together but to understand and 

love each other? to inspire each other's hearts and 

minds, and unify each other's lives and deeds? We 

live together not to sink into each other's lives, but 

to enlarge each other's lives and hearts and make a 

sanctuary for the race. If man and wife live together 

with any lower ideal than this, they will surely enter 

into the greatest unhappiness for themselves, and 

build something worse than unhappiness for their 

children. A house divided against itself cannot stand, 

and a discordant marriage breeds dissolution of both 

mind and body for the children who are the fruits 

thereof. 

There is hardly a marriage contract entered into 
165 



166 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

that does not, in the beginning, have shining about its 
portals the sweet halo of heaven. Then why do we 
not see even a deeper glow and radiance at each hearth- 
stone where love is supposed to have reigned for years? 
Why do these ideals seem to grow less and fade away, 
you ask — for in too many marriages there is scarcely 
a trace of the ideal left before the meridian of life is 
reached. Browning says we must /'have some bliss 
to die with," and in order to have that it must have 
attended us all the way. And that is the whole secret 
— we must have our ideals at the start and see that we 
preserve them to the finish. 

How many people marry and then "settle down," 
as the saying goes; we really and literally should 
marry and then rise up. The man and wife that 
aspire to fulfill their pledges and really learn to appre- 
ciate the holy estate into which they have entered will 
fail if they waste one day. To live the perfect life we 
must work without ceasing, and I believe that the 
most perfect life can be lived in the mother and father 
relationship. Jesus shows us how in the oneness of 
flesh into which man and wife enter they begin to have 
some sense of real unity — oneness of mind. And un- 
less we find unity in the person we will never find it in 
spirit, and vice versa. If we have real unity, it will 
express itself through every avenue of our being, body 
and mind. 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 167 

Jesus Christ was constantly beset with suggestive 
questions concerning marriage, and gave plainly the 
universal answer for us all. In Mark x, 6-10, we 
have the doctrine of marriage set forth complete, 
and what is the answer to the stiff-necked questioners? 
Christ shows how man and woman are joined together 
because of their spiritual origin, because God made 
them in his own image and likeness, and in their God- 
like natures only are they married, which nothing hu- 
man can put asunder. 

Have mothers and fathers been finding each other 
in the "image and likeness of God," and endeavoring 
to establish their marriage and their parenthood in the 
spiritual sense, that in so doing they might receive 
their children as of the kingdom of heaven? Do they 
really feel that God, divine love, has joined them to- 
gether, rather than their personal whim and will? 

Notice how beautifully there follows in this same 
chapter of Mark the remark about the children being 
brought to Jesus — for the mothers brought them when 
they were drawn by his spiritual recognition of them 
as mothers. 

Another beautiful text, and one which details the 
everyday reverence of father and mother for each 
other, is mentioned in Ephesians v, 22-23. St. Paul 
there speaks of the ideal marriage and spiritual rela- 
tionship between man and woman, who are the tern- 



168 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

pies of God not builded with hands. He pictures the 
perfect ideal which should exist between husband and 
wife, and makes the relationship symbolic of the spirit- 
ual unity. He shows how it is our schooling and pre- 
paratory experience which will usher us into the 
higher things of spirit. Let us read it, mothers and 
fathers ; let us study it together and digest each word 
thoroughly and assimilate it into our everyday lives. 

In reading Froebel we are constantly brought face 
to face with the fact that he takes this spiritual state- 
ment as his starting point, constantly reiterating and 
restating, in varied forms, his ''confession of faith." He 
knew that the unwritten volume and the unformulated 
scheme of life must stand on the fact that the mother 
and father relation — namely, marriage — must be on the 
spiritual basis. Very few except Jesus, St. Paul and 
Froebel have ever dared to claim that it was absolutely 
and only a spiritual relationship; but this indeed they 
claimed for every other human relationship. 

The entire Bible is a commentary on the spiritu- 
ality of the family and the race, with God as the source; 
yet strange as it may seem, that great institution — the 
church — whose sole object is the interpretation of the 
Scriptures, seldom regulates this one important item 
of human life beyond the formal rite of the marriage 
day. This closest of relationships is established by 
so-called sacred sanction, the ceremony is performed 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 169 

and paid for, and then the couple is set adrift with 
sHght instructions and a formal prayer at most. As 
a consequence, the church grapples all its days with the 
tangles propagated by heedless marriages. 

Much in the same fashion does the school to-day. 
It takes hold of the externals of wisdom and instills 
them into the intellect, and afterward, if chance has 
not been favorable, the character must be considered 
by the reformatory. 

We must begin at the source of things if we would 
build for eternity, and if we desire true results as 
Christians we can find the source only in God and the 
spiritual unity of human life. The father and mother 
who consciously plan to have a perfect family; to build 
a perfect house for them to live in (however small) ; to 
make, through the spirit, the perfect home — can never 
be working for anything less than perfected society 
and state; and they will make for it more definitely 
than any other agency. 

It were idle to discuss marriage from an anthropo- 
logical aspect, or trace even the philosophic and re- 
ligious establishment of it. It is here among us an 
established, sacred and necessary ordinance. We 
need not even discuss whether it is a failure or a suc- 
cess, as the conclusion always depends upon the Ui% 
of the one who is arguing. We who have entered into 
it for truth's sake have only one duty, and that is to 



170 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

make a success of it; and we can only do that through 
persevering and expanding our ideals concerning it. 
To suggest how to go about this is the immediate ob- 
ject of this chapter. 

We know of perfect marriages and we desire noth- 
ing less for ourselves. Many will agree that marriage 
is either heaven or hell, and we must conclude that a 
perfect marriage must have ideals to start out with 
and ideals to cIos« with. Even if linked with blindness 
and ignorance, these ideals will stand the wear and 
tear when nothing else will. They will help over hard 
places, weaknesses of heart and body. In fact, a 
woman or man who has set the standard of a perfg^Qt 
married life will often sacrifice heavily rather than 
lose it Jesus has said: "Seek first the kingdom," 
etc.; and if we try to seek the kingdom of heavenly 
bliss in marriage, we can hardly guess what riches will 
be added unto us. 

Where is the woman or man wise enough to sense 
the full and sacred meaning of parenthood before 
choosing a mate? To speak ideally, the man and 
woman together should seek to unite the desires of 
their hearts with the wisdom which will work for the 
well-being of their children and the perfecting of the 
family. Even if we do not see into these things until 
after we have made many mistakes, let us work and re- 
construct, for homes we must have; and how can we 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 171 

have homes unless some one consciously plans the 
contents and determines the quality of them? 

Think what home means; it means not a place of 
shelter nor a place in which to enjoy our food, save in 
a single sense. Home means the beautiful entirety 
contained in the family — father, mother, child — all 
inclosed in a unity, whatever the shelter over their 
heads may be. Home, like heaven, is a condition, not 
a place. When we look about us and see how few mar- 
riages rest on principle or on character, and how few 
homes are being consciously built on a Christian 
foundation, demanding of all honesty, cooperation, and 
respect for each other's highest ideals, it makes us 
question what means our boasted civilization and our 
claim as a nation of homes. 

Not instinct's governing in the marriage relation, 
nor human ambition, nor desire, nor personality, but 
Love — the divine intelligence of the Mind of God — 
that is the only thing that will bring about ideal 
homes and social conditions. Nor is this an empty 
phrase to sound sweetly on the ear. But in every ac- 
tion the father and mother, the husband and wife 
should be governed by a vast and all-inclusive love, a 
love that dares sift itself and purify itself daily, know- 
ing that its eternal qualities will bear chastening and 
cleansing. And what if the dross do fall away? 
Where such love is practiced, marriage is a success 



172 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

and home is indeed heaven and our children the chil- 
dren of God. 

Personal love, as I have said so many times, is all 
dross. It limits, it is selfish, it is jealous, it is a dan- 
gerous thing to keep house with, and it can only be 
washed out through unselfish sympathy, and through 
the love divine which is so wise, so strong and so un- 
failing. To make married life a success this sifting 
process must constantly and consciously go on be- 
tween the father and mother. Of course if the sons 
and daughters of our race were properly reared in the 
beginning their time of mating would never be a time 
of problem making, but a time of beautiful fulfillment 
to their own lives and when the abnegation of self 
should begin for the sake of the child and a new race. 

But few young people have the full and proper 
preparation for life, and the greater part of their devel- 
opment is left until after they have entered the mar- 
riage state; and how rife with disappointments this 
crucial time often is ! Most of us are obliged to begin 
to learn at the time our preparatory stage should be 
finished. But it is never too late to begin to dare live 
truly. If each might only feel the deep purport of 
the united life and lay down selfishness and personal 
opinion! Daughters and sons before they reach the 
age to contemplate marriage should be inspired by 
their parents to feel the richness and truth of the pure 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 173 

family relationships, and taught to look forward to ex- 
periencing them. It ought to be included in the school 
training of our young men and women in the shape of 
special lectures by consecrated thinkers — men and 
women who are working for the purity of the race. 

Froebel says : "Shall we, men and fathers, and moth- 
ers too,^not at least be frank, and cease to conceal from 
ourselves the never-healing wounds and the perma- 
nently callous places in our disposition, the dark spots 
left in our souls by the ruthless extirpation of noble 
and elevating thoughts and feelings in the days of 
our misguided youth and boyhood? Shall we never 
see that noble germs were at that time broken and 
withered — nay, killed — in our souls? And shall we 
not heed this for our children's sake?" 

Ah, there is the great secret! If the marriage rela- 
tionship always looked beyond itself into its relation 
to the child, the first hour of its consummation would 
be dedicated to self-purification, to unselfishness, to 
a reconstruction of the old broken feelings and ideals 
for the sake of the child. 

It takes a mighty determination on the part of a man 
and a woman to hold to the vision of a perfect mar- 
riage. But in these pages I desire especially to talk 
with mothers and to hold them responsible for the 
fulfillment of their whole duty. Not that I hold that 
it is possible for the mother to do more than half; but 



174 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

the mother half is a large half, and a beautiful half, and 
if she does her half perfectly, perhaps she will find 
that perfection never divides itself into halves, and that 
after all she receives the whole blessing. 

The mother is the highest embodiment of love. If 
the mother gives love, actual love, it is an undividable 
thing. A pure woman's love contains the whole; it 
is the love of a friend, sister, wife, mother, all in one, 
and carries with it the individual gift of each in unity. 
God is in such love relationships as a mother estab- 
lishes with her own family, and through such love 
we find God in humanity. By loving man whom we 
have seen, we learn to love God whom we have not 
seen. 

Let us discuss the more direct application of the 
words "love," "brotherhood," and find in it for our- 
selves the secret of highest living, and the help we 
need to do our sweet share to make marriage and fam- 
ily what they should be. 

A man is but a child of larger growth, and the laws 
of mind which govern and keep happy the child also 
apply to the man. He must be treated with infinite 
tact and feel a quiet guidance; he will take dictation 
only through love, unbounded love, and he demands 
and deserves confidence. Women must always gov- 
ern men in their higher lives; criticism will never do 
it nor will lack of esteem; quietly suggesting a better 
way and practicing it yourself is what counts. 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 175 

Watching for the best interests of the father and 
the family in everything, and practicing economy for 
truth's sake (not for the sake of accumulation), is the 
most practical application of love a woman can show 
to her husband and the father and provider of the 
family. Sooner or later the man who has received 
such sympathy and cooperation, and feels that it is 
given with the highest motives, will find his heart be- 
ing tugged at and his life being lifted and purified, no 
matter how poor his ideals may seem to be. Some one 
has said, ''Man may hold the destiny of the nation 
in his hands, but the mother holds the destiny of the 
man." 

Marriage does not include only the man and wife; 
into its circle enters the child with all its right and 
need of cooperation. Life is an undivided whole. The 
father and mother and child are an undivided trinity. 
If one is unconsidered in our scheme of life the whole 
is a failure. The mother who would plan a perfect 
life for her child cannot leave the father unconsid- 
ered, nor vice versa. Paul says, in Ephesians v, that 
man is the "savior of the body." There are many deep 
meanings in these words. Mothers and fathers should 
read it together, and perhaps together they may reach 
out and give the world this new vision of man and 
marriage. 

The world is paralyzed to-day with a prejudice that 



176 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

is being harbored in the heart of nearly everyone; it 
is generally accepted that by nature man is not as 
good as his sister — woman. Woman has foolishly and 
in vanity accepted her moral superiority as a fact, and 
does not see that in so doing she has rent society 
asunder. St. Paul's talks on love were largely to men, 
and his lofty sense of man's divinity was a constant 
reassurance to his followers, who were mostly men. 

If we read and study carefully the words of Jesus 
Christ, how much we find this condemnation of the 
masculine wiped out. Christ's conception of himself 
was that he was perfect in every respect. The world 
has taken the love of life and the love of God as two 
absolutely separate emotions. 

We have to learn that all that is real and eternal in 
man, and all that is real in his love for woman, is his 
hunger for the ideal, the spiritual. 

The foolish tendency of all times to consider man as 
prone to evil and woman as the innocent temptress 
and type of virtue, must be done away with. One 
writer has said, "In woman's weakness and ignorance 
is the devil's opportunity," and much truth there is in 
the speech. Nor can that "ignorance" and "weakness" 
be wiped out through woman becoming informed 
from a worldly standpoint. To be thoroughly versed 
in the errors of the hour and the abnormal conditions 
of the race is no additional intelligence. Woman's 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 177 

wit, if she be mother or lover, must be drawn from 
God's wit — must work for constructive knowledge and 
creativity. 

Every woman should make it her highest woman's 
work to purify her sense of love. Woman is symbolic 
of love and she should make herself worthy the sym- 
bol. A mother can do this as perhaps no other woman 
can; and the rest of womankind would not need to if 
just the mothers did their duty, and really mothered 
the sons and the fathers of the race. 

Think of your own son; is he not as precious and 
pure to you as your daughter? The mother must keep 
him so, and work to wipe out this stain on our nation 
of men, whole armies of whom appear to be for sale, 
selling their trust and their souls. Perhaps we are 
somewhat to blame. Woman's financial extravagance 
and her often slight cooperation bring about man's 
looseness in money matters and morals, and create a 
tendency toward irresponsibility in the higher things. 

If only mothers could take up man in the concrete, 
and make direct application of their knowledge of 
truth to that individual man who depends most upon 
each for interpretation in life; if they were to take noth- 
ing more than the following statements of the philoso- 
pher Emerson, and, in making this direct application, 
turn the negatives all into positives ! Let us try it and 
see what a wonderful statement it will make for us 
to build our appreciation of man upon. 



178 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

"Man is the dwarf of himself." 

Man has his full, true stature. 

"Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit." 

He is permeated and dissolved by spirit always. 

"He filled nature with his overflowing currents." 

He eternally fills nature with his overflowing cur- 
rents. 

"But having made for himself this huge shell, his 
waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; 
he is shrunk to a drop." 

He forever fills the veins and veinlets of the uni- 
verse. His measure is infinite. 

"He sees that the structure still fits him, but fits him 
colossally." 

He sees that the structure fits him, for it is his image 
and likeness. 

"Say, rather, once it fitted him; now it corresponds 
to him from afar and on high." 

Its fits him now; it corresponds to his being. 

"He admires timidly his own work." 

It is his work and he admires it boldly; he loves it 
forever. 

Such thoughts make us thinkers and seers, if we 
follow up the symbols and make their meanings prac- 
tical. 

As mothers we must discern not only in our chil- 
dren themselves, but in the children's fathers, the great 



MARRIAGE IDEALS. 179 

elementary powers of thought and life; we will no 
longer see our children struggling and wrestling with 
undefined conditions and unknown depths, when the 
power of truth is under the feet of the parents. Woe 
always comes to the mother who attempts to do her 
work without the inner light. 

How many great men have been quoted as the result 
of their mothers' ideals. We have Abraham Lincoln, 
Carlyle, Mill, and many a great name in olden history. 
These mothers were not great scholars, but great 
lovers, who burrowed not in books, but into life and 
the deep things of God. 

And what a joyful moment it is to a mother when 
her husband or son who has reached fame and promi- 
nence gently places his truly won laurels upon her 
brow, for in their hours of struggle she planted the 
eternal seeds of light and truth. And what an honar 
to a wife to be her husband's star! 

We wives and mothers must believe in the mighty 
instincts of our husbands and sons, the "obstinate 
questionings," the "high divinings" before which their 
mortal natures "tremble like guilty things," those 
"first affections and shadowy recollections" which are 
found in every honest breast and are yet the "fountain 
light" of each common man's being; and then our 
share in the work of perfecting life's relationships will 
bring us the full reward for which our high labors 
alone can prepare us. 



CHAPTER XII. 
A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 



**It is not the childless woman who has mastered 
man, but it is the mother, the one who has fulfilled her 
duty. Such women who fulfill their mission are those 
who reign over reigning men; those who prepare new 
generations of men and form public opinion; and 
therefore in the hands of these women lies the highest 
power of men's salvation from the threatening evils 
of our times. Yes, women, mothers, in your hands, 
more than in those of any others, lies the salvation of 
the world!" — Tolstoi. 

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Noth- 
ing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." 
— Emerson, 



CHAPTER XII. 

A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 

Books ol advice to women on the subject of mar- 
riage and home building usually deprecate the bring- 
ing of many children into the world, claiming that 
large families make decrepit children, worn-out moth- 
ers, and tend to make the struggle for life an almost 
unbearable burden to the father. 

When we look back at the records of our fore- 
fathers, at the housefuls of children that are con- 
stantly being boasted of, this argument seems un- 
founded, for to-day the sons and daughters of those 
children are the backbone of the race; and how many 
a woman, the mother of eleven children, is still hale 
and hearty and in our midst. There cannot be one 
reasonable argument brought forward to prove that 
the bearing of many children is a wrong to the race, 
however injurious it may prove to the mother; and 
the possible injury is usually due to her ignorance con- 
cerning the right principles of living. 

We as a nation are to-day depending upon the for- 
eign element to fill up our ranks, and it is a question 

183 



184 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

whether we do not need our own new-world blood 
for our present regenerated generation. In France, 
where they have no foreign immigration to depend on, 
the decrease in population has become so appalling 
that the government has put a premium on the raising 
of large families. No government position can be 
held by any citizen who has not more than three chil- 
dren or one of a family of more than three. It is cer- 
tainly true that in America the so-called better classes 
have few children, and the usual family table of to-day 
is more apt to call for three chairs than for ten, and 
this is becoming more and more common among the 
well-to-do. Those are doing the least who are 
oftenest best able to afiford to properly and com- 
pletely give the right preparation to a large number 
of children for the bettering of society. As a rule the 
family in moderate circumstances has its several chil- 
dren; they are one of its sweetest luxuries; and as we 
all know, the very poorest seem most ready to under- 
take the largest duty in this direction. 

There are so many different causes for this state of 
affairs that we will not stop to discuss them, but pro- 
ceed at once to glance at the really ideal family circle, 
which we must all admit should consist of a good 
round number. 

Let us draw a picture of a home — a home where 
the mother and father have a large nestful to care for. 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 185 

Is it not a perfect picture of pure activity, children and 
parents cooperating together, working in perfect har- 
mony — perhaps to make both ends meet, perhaps to 
carry out some higher ambition? The poet paints it 
for us thus: 

"I pray not for 
Great riches, nor 
For vast estates and castle halls; 
Give me to hear the bare footfalls 
Of children o'er 
An oaken floor 
New rinsed with sunshine, or bespread 

With but the tiny coverlet 
And pillow for the baby's head." 

Even if perfect harmony does not exist, is not a 
house full of active young people apt to bring about 
a high grade of individuality? Is not the healthy 
criticism of growing brothers and sisters the best 
school for character? Is not the mother of such a 
family as a general thing a women of broad sympa- 
thies and great capacities? And is she not as often a 
woman of health and strength? And what is the in- 
fluence of a large family upon the father? Think of 
the responsibility he has to carry; think of the energy 
he must put forth; of the example he must always be! 
Is not such a responsibility broadening to his intelli- 
gence? And as a citizen is he not of double worth 
because of his interest in the needs of the growing 
youth about him? 



186 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

If we could only see that a home conducted accord- 
ing to convenronal law and order is a very poor thing 
to exchange for a home of joy and content, even if the 
latter be accompanied with bare floors! Many a 
young woman from a family in good circumstances 
will engage her affection and devotion to one who can- 
not provide all the luxuries to which she has been ac- 
customed in her father's house, and after their union, 
in order to approximate the old order and style of liv- 
ing, they will calculate how they may avoid the sweet- 
est duty of life — raising a family — and lightly excuse 
themselves on the ground of not being able to afford 
it. They do not realize what they are robbing them- 
selves of, poor things! The picture need not be drawn 
here in order to portray this conception of home and 
marriage. We see it every day in our midst. How, 
as to a fresh living fountain, we turn from such a 
hearthstone to a little home with narrow walls and 
precious contents, in which the father and mother are 
bravely striving to give their children the highest and 
best their two pairs of arms and hands can offer. How 
often the simple family life in a home of poverty is a 
picture of grandeur compared to the shallow existence 
of the soul-poor, conventional, worn-out hearts that 
beat for the empty world alone. 

The responsibility of a father for his children is 
never anything but wholesome, for each child gives 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 187 

him an added channel out into his own world while 
he is preparing one for the child. After struggling 
and fighting through the problems and intricacies of 
life, even if the victory over poverty never is his, what 
is of more satisfaction than the children, and what may 
be a larger resource in the end? In preserving to our- 
selves the gift of the child — simplicity and natural- 
ness — we must deny so much of the world's wordli- 
ness — being so much in the world and yet so little of 
it. How much of appearance, affectation, style, and 
useless expenditure of self many a busy mother and 
father might spare themselves. 

How truly the earnest father and mother who are 
too busy to be worldly, learn to preserve to their fam- 
ily great blessings and high aims. They learn what 
many parents do not learn, that not what we give to 
our children, but what we make them capable of, is 
their inheritance. 

Emerson says: 

"Cast the bantling on the rocks, 

Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat; 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet." 

In his essay on "Self Reliance" this great philosopher 
shows us how to bring the quality out of the creature 
by trying its fiber; how every sort of opposition but 
tries its metal and molds it into form. Large families 



188 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

bring out this power in father, mother and child, all 
three. How many of us hesitate to have children be- 
cause we cannot bring them up in luxury and lavish 
everything upon them, thus weakening their charac- 
ters! 

Some will criticise this advocating the raising of 
large families, because there is much social abuse to be 
rectified ; and because, through the pressure of the so- 
called ''hard" times, a large family is bound to be the 
cause to the parents of a great struggle for existence. 
But people who "read" seldom need to be scolded for 
having too large families; people who are intelligent 
enough to inform themselves on progressive subjects 
are the ones who ought to have the large families, and 
they can generally afford to. We have here in Amer- 
ica a middle class, poverty stricken in neither mind 
nor money, and to these we look for our best results 
in family life. 

Tolstoi, in his autobiography, after carefully work- 
ing out the reasonable duties and life of man, and after 
showing the happiness of the man when he has truly 
fulfilled God's law, turns to the woman, and with deep 
earnestness gives us his opinion that woman, almost 
up to the present hour, has fulfilled her specific duty, 
her work in life and toward the family. By so doing 
she is to-day in the ascendency, and master of the 
social situation. Man has fallen from the dignity of 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 189 

labor and earning an honest living, and is living by 
his wits. Woman is beginning to repudiate her chief 
duty — child bearing — and she surely will work her 
own ruin in so doing. Tolstoi calls woman to her 
senses, and puts into her hands the reins by which 
she may guide us back again to the more perfect life, 
in which every honest man works daily for his own 
bread and shelter and that of his family, and each 
woman gives herself up to the rearing of her children 
unto God. He makes a picture of the childless 
woman and the race whose women refuse to be 
mothers, which is in itself one of despair. But in the 
picture he points us to hope, and the fact that there is 
yet time. 

He says: 

"If only women would understand their worth, their 
power, and would use them for the work of salvation 
of their husbands, brothers, and children — the salva- 
tion of all men! 

"Women, mothers of the wealthy classes, the salva- 
tion of men of our world from, the evils from which it 
suffers is in your hands! 

"Not those women who are occupied by their fig- 
ures, bustles, head-dresses, and their charms for men, 
and who, contrary to their will, by oversight and with 
despair, bear children, and then give their children to 
wet-nurses; nor yet those who go to different lee- 



190 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

tures, and talk of psychometrical centers and differen- 
tiation, and who also try to free themselves from bear- 
ing children in order not to hinder their folly, which 
they call development — but those women and mothers 
who, having the power of freeing themselves from 
child bearing, hold strictly and consciously to that 
eternal, immutable law, knowing that the weight and 
labor of that submission is the aim of their life. These 
women and mothers of our wealthy classes are those in 
whose hands, more than in any others, Hes the salva- 
tion of the men of our sphere in life, from the calami- 
ties which oppress them. 

"You women and mothers who submit consciously 
to the law of God, you are the only ones who, in our 
miserable, mutilated world which has lost all sem- 
blance of humanity — you are the only ones who know 
the whole, true meaning of life according to the law 
of God: and you are the only ones who, by your ex- 
ample, can show men the happiness of that submis- 
sion to God's law of which they rob themselves. 

"You are the only ones who know the joy and hap- 
piness which take possession of one's whole being, 
the bliss which is the share of every man who does not 
deviate from God's law. You know the joy of love to 
your husband — a joy never ending, never destroyed 
like all other joys, but forming the beginning of an- 
other new joy — love to your child. You are the only 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 191 

ones, when you are simple and submissive to God's 
law, who know, not the farcical pretense of labor, 
which men of your world call labor, but that true labor 
which is imposed by God upon men, and know the 
rewards for it, the bliss which it gives." 

In talking with an ingenuous mother of a large 
family she told me how her children ranged from 
twenty-five to iive years of age; she boasted how for- 
tunate she had been tO' have escaped motherhood 
from five to seven years at a time; but one problem 
seemed uppermost in her thought. Her great ques- 
tion was, whether I considered it unvirtuous to pre- 
vent conception; not to destroy the living thing itself, 
but to merely avoid motherhood. There are so many 
ways of answering this question, and so many ways of 
putting it, that for my part I try to waive the discus- 
sion. Every woman cuts her own path in this seem- 
ing wilderness of marriage and parenthood, and ac- 
cording as she gives will she receive. Being pressed 
for my own personal feeling in the matter, I said that 
there was no need for me to even consider the question, 
since neither bodily comforts nor appearance nor con- 
venience nor duties demanded it; that I was desirous 
of a family and considered it only too great a blessing 
to be thoroughly worthy of each sweet addition to our 
household. But she insisted that if a necessity 
should arise from the inability of the mother physi- 



192 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

cally, what then? Even under such conditions for a 
woman to be obliged to resort to methods would be 
tragic, and if she were living with an intelligent com- 
panion, would be unnecessary. If man and woman 
are living together for the common good of the fam- 
ily, and with ideals, such conditions would never arise. 
If it became necessary for any mother through ill 
health to avoid motherhood, it should be the desire 
of the husband that she be made well before attempt- 
ing motherhood; and further, to live in continual 
dread and fear of such a thing would be death-dealing 
in itself to both the body and the ideals of the woman 
and the man. To live in marriage in such conditions 
would wrong both. The dread of family building is 
the bane of this nation. 

Here is an ideal picture of perfected health and heart 
such as might well invite motherhood. Emerson 
says: 

"But love me then and only, when you know 
Me for the channels of the river of God 
From deep ideal fontal heavens that fiow." 

Would that the prospective mother and father 
might keep this thought! But to speculate for even 
ten minutes a week on such destructive things as many 
women indulge in would rid a woman of all her ideals 
of self and family. Anything short of perfect family 
life is bound to bring gloom of mind and evil results. 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 193 

Married life must be either all right or it is all wrong. 
It were hard indeed to "take no thought of the body" 
with such speculations constantly in the mind. 

If we admit that life is in its essence a spiritual thing, 
there is no sweeter law to ever hold in one's thought 
than that ''only the Christ can express itself in and 
through us if we keep the mind set on the ideal." 
The mother's mind gives the cue to every expression 
that pervades the home life of both father and child, 
so she cannot hold her thought too high. 

It is a very good point to seek to use the words 
"father and mother" instead of ''husband and wife" in 
all conversations, and see what a different tone goes 
into the thought. We speak of God's fatherhood and 
motherhood, and when the Godlike relation exists 
between the man and woman, these terms are all- 
inclusive; we can go no deeper. 

Many a woman will say to herself, "But I began 
wrong; if I could begin over again I might do differ- 
ently." That is only a plausible excuse. Were you 
t-alking face to face with me I would say that many a 
woman has begun after she has become a grand- 
mother, and not only worked out in her own home at 
the eleventh hour, but projected all her new sweet 
ideas of intelligence into every grandchild, fulfilling 
their demands, for, as Oliver Wendell Holmes puts 
it, in every reform we must begin with our grand- 
parents. 



194 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

The great need is the courage to begin; let us dare 
to be honest in our desires and actually to-day begin 
to practice whatsoever seems to have come into our 
consciousness in the shape of a practical truth, a 
higher plan; and each day will help to lead into the 
next day's mysteries. Do not let us be afraid of a 
single condition, no matter how petrified and unyield- 
ing it may appear. Let us make a beginning; every 
tangle can be unraveled if careful, patient fingers are 
applied to it. Remember the truth we have to-day 
will unfold into a greater truth to-morrow if we use it. 

Many a mother will excuse herself on the plea of 
lacking the intellectual and will power to carry out 
this higher law and order in her home; how many a 
mother confesses herself as ridden over by her chil- 
dren and husband, when this is only an excuse for her 
own spiritual inertia. Every hour and minute of a 
mother's life can be made to overflow with power and 
intelligence. A mother's heart and love dictate the 
purest intelligence, and how many a superior man and 
master mind have we found as examples in history who 
were influenced by simple-hearted and uneducated 
mothers! The spiritual truths of life can be grasped 
more easily by the simple-hearted mother than by the 
intellectual one, because the instincts are the secret 
passages to the spiritual consciousness. The intel- 
lect has been portrayed to us as the Mephistopheles 



A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 195 

in the great drama of life as pictured in Goethe's 
'Taust." When the secret of Being and Creativity was 
demanded by Faust, the devil was compelled to step 
aside and send the inquiring human lover to the 
mother-source of the universe. 

Almost every woman with whom you come into 
confidential discourse feels her life loaded with prob- 
lems. I say, Stop talking about them; be ashamed of 
them; and go to work and get rid of them. Hunt the 
truth at the bottom and find your freedom. Every 
day that you are tolerating wrong conditions you are 
adding more. Get hold of all the liberating thoughts 
you can, and go to work at your seeming impossibili- 
ties. 

Women say to me, "It is easy for you to talk about 
freedom, but all are not situated as you are. Most 
of us are dependent on our husbands and cannot carry 
out our ideals." An inteUigent father and mother 
can know nothing sweeter than absolute interde- 
pendence. I am glad to say I live in the experience of 
it daily, and have learned to know that nothing else 
will make for perfect family life. Perfect interde- 
pendence between parents teaches children the deep- 
est social principles, and makes marriage and family 
life a school wherein to acquire the lessons which 
shall fit them for the Hfe of the brotherhood and 
heaven. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 



"How strangely the world has worked! How at 
variance with all natural law! For every kinder- 
garten there are a hundred — nay, a thousand — 
prisons, jails, reformatories, asylums, and hospitals. 
And yet society cries out that there is need for more 
of these. Are we blind, that we fail as a nation, a 
state, and as individuals, to recognize the incontro- 
vertible fact that such demand will never cease until 
we cut ofif the supply? And does it not behoove us 
to work with a will and together that the little ones 
of to-day may not require such training as civilization 
ofifers through its police and courts of law in place of 
the kindergarten schools?" — Mrs. Theodore W. Birney. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 

Never before has woman been engaged in so much 
work of reform as now; and it makes one question — 
If she is so active, so inspired as to agitate and press 
these movements, why does she not take her hold 
lower down and begin where her rightful work is, in 
the correct forming of the race? It is self-evident 
that the largest chance to work constructively has al- 
ways been her opportunity. Why should she leave 
that and go out into the more remote paths and hunt 
for a "foreign occupation along the lines of reconstruc- 
tion? 

If woman has had this formative opportunity for 

generations, why is the world so bad and why are 

things so sadly awry? Why are men so corruptible? 

Where were their mothers when their characters were 

building? Were they busy with their children's bodies, 

or the externals of their conduct, or were they praying 

in the closet for God to do what they should have 

been doing and what he had given them to do? Why 

has not the knowledge been given to women which 

199 



200 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

would enable them to evolve the beautiful possibili- 
ties of family life? Why have they in many instances 
found that sphere narrow and monotonous? We 
must confess together that for the greatest, most all- 
absorbing and unending task there is — viz., "child 
training" — our women have not been prepared. 

When such a life as that of Henry George goes out 
for the purification of the race, how we mothers should 
be moved to work and win for our children right con- 
ditions of life and emancipation from selfishness! The 
mother should be brave enough to say, I do not want 
civic rights until I have fulfilled my social ones; I do 
not want larger avenues until I have deserved and en- 
joyed those I now possess, until I have made a gift to 
the world of a few successes — say myself, and those 
who are given into my hands to mold — and when I 
have given to the world a few model daughters and 
sons; I do not want any larger rights, I do not want 
civil rights until I have earned them through service 
to my country in contributing to it good citizens. 

If these same rights were only granted men upon 
the self-same ground, we would not have this mutila- 
tion of power which the world of politics shows. 

"The childhood of the land is in the hands of the 
mothers," and also its perfecting. Think of it! And 
remember God sent it there and made them the cus- 
todians of it. And we are given charge of not only the 



WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 201 

babes of our own nest, but the greater family is ours 
to watch over lest they come to menace us. 

''The kindergarten is the free republic of childhood, 
from which everything dangerous to its morality is 
removed, as its lack of development requires. Child- 
hood must be taken care of and protected, for it cannot 
protect itself; and the more tender the age the more it 
needs guidance, that the body as well as the soul may 
not be crippled." 

Some one has said that "Women are the foster moth- 
ers of every modern movement." Women should be 
mother leaders rather than mere reformers, and when 
we consider that there was never a wrong thing that 
could not have been crushed in infancy, it makes us 
question why so many evils have escaped into the 
world; and we are almost forced to confess it is be- 
cause we mothers have not been working right. 

The world does not grow better; we have to make 
it better. And when we sit at home and let the world 
wag on, it is not going to adjust itself some day and be 
a flower garden suddenly for the benefit of our chil- 
dren. If we are going to have right schools, we must 
be at work demanding them and be intelligent enough 
to know what kind to demand. We have, got to study 
and go out into the world and see what is wrong there, 
and how the wrong is to be righted, lest our children 
be led into temptation. This will lead us into the re- 



202 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

form work which naturally belongs to the mother, and 
teach us how to make our boys and girls self-guarded 
against these evils. 

Do not talk about your neighborhood as hopeless 
and say, ''There is no cooperation in this town," 
"Everybody belongs to separate sets," ''The churches 
are such factions," and other lamentable and seem- 
ingly hopeless facts that make almost every village a 
problem. Make a beginning. 

"Look at the end of work ; contrast 
The petty done, the undone vast." 

Metaphorically speaking, roll up your sleeves and 
go to work at home for new social conditions. Read 
of the almost impossible reforms which some few have 
accomplished in vast social settlements of the down- 
trodden and poverty-stricken districts of large cities. 
Post yourself in regard to modern social developments. 
It would pay to make a trip to Chicago, New York 
or some other great city, and come in touch with the 
leading spirits in this work and be inspired. It would 
be the best investment one could make for life and the 
good fortune of her family if she should become in- 
spired with a larger love of humanity and an unquench- 
able desire to better it. I know whereof I speak, and 
what riches it has brought to me and mine to have 
learned to thus reach out and give and do. Such a 
one is always the largest gainer in the end. The 



WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 203 

young man in the Bible was shortsighted when he re- 
fused the Master's advice to "sell all" and give to the 
poor. He did not conceive what a great kingdom of 
heaven there was in self-denial and brotherly love. 

Social-settlement work at home is a possibility to 
every woman; everything that works for neighborly 
cooperation comes under that head. We often despise 
doing the small things that demand attention at our 
door, and wish we might reach out and do the great 
things. 

We often look upon publicly recognized women 
with a quiet longing that we toO' might be doing 
something worth while; but are we willing to make 
the sacrifices they do? And they really accomplish 
little more than the woman who does her full duty at 
home and in her own neighborhood. 

The women's clubs usually give women of most 
progressive neighborhoods an opportunity for broader 
Nvork; that is, if they are studying the things that 
mothers and women should most thoroughly know. 

Perhaps there is no such organization in the locali- 
ties where some of us reside, and the question is, 
What shall we who live in small neighborhoods do 
where there is none? Often there are few poor to 
look after and a small round of church and society 
duties seems to be all there is. But social-settlement 
work is always possible to every woman, no matter 



204 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

how high or how low may be her station or in what 
neighborhood she may have her home. Through the 
kindergarten and church and school every one of us 
might find a rational way to take up some work for 
social improvement. 

Have you a kindergarten in your neighborhood? 
What would you think of a self-respecting neighbor- 
hood without a church? It will become quite as un- 
usual a thing to have a neighborhood without a kin- 
dergarten. If you do not know why this is true, set 
about reading up on the question, and see how neces- 
sary a kindergarten is to every child under primary- 
school age. It is necessary to the school days that 
follow that the child be carefully prepared. It is 
necessary to the mother that she and her children come 
in touch with the child world as well as the small 
home circle. It is necessary to the church, which has 
no substitute for the kindergarten and which must 
some day recognize it and make it a part of its social 
spiritual whole. Many leaders in the church are look- 
ing forward to that day and believe the kindergarten to 
be the most direct method whereby children may be led 
into the higher life. 

Froebel says: "The fitting religious service for 
children has grown out of the new education of itself, 
without any special precepts from me. New forms of 
social life correspond to the new spirit which has 



WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 205 

waked up in society; let us only awaken this spirit in 
our children; it will work creatively in this field also. 
But in order to do this, that dry, insipid frame of mind 
must be avoided which is usually created in children 
by incomprehensible word-teaching and catechising. 

"The aim of education is the representation of duti- 
ful, pure, inviolate and therefore holy life; the God- 
likeness in man, his essence, is to be developed and 
raised to consciousness by education, and thus he is to 
attain self-knowledge, peace with the world, and union 
with God." 

Here is a plan for organizing a kindergarten asso- 
ciation which has been found most successful: A 
meeting may be called of the few mothers in the 
neighborhood who are thoroughly interested. After 
passing resolutions to work as an organization for the 
support of a kindergarten in the community, let 
them choose a name and elect regular officers and di- 
rectors. 

Let each member of the immediate circle who is 
willing take a paper and secure signatures from 
among the neighborhood residents as members of the 
association, a small membership fee to be voted. With 
this membership fee, which is supposed to be paid in 
advance, the first expense of opening the kindergarten 
and buying materials is met. 

Then a subscription paper is circulated among those 



206 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

who will send children, the subscription paper being 
headed something like this: 'The undersigned agree 
severally to pay the sum set opposite their names to 
[include name of association], for the forty [or less] 
weeks of the ensuing school year," it being thoroughly 
understood that no one can send a child except upon 
a definite arrangement to pay this sum regularly. No 
other plan could guarantee a success, and every reason- 
able parent will admit that one cannot enter upon so 
expensive an undertaking without definite financial 
arrangement for the whole year. It can be seen by 
this time about how much money there is pledged for 
the whole work, and the plan cannot possibly fall 
through when placed on this business-Hke basis. 

The association should be chartered to have the 
right to collect regularly the money subscribed to it, 
whether the children are taken out or not. Of course 
in case of emergency, the board of directors can vote 
to release anyone from the payment of the subscrip- 
tion. A certain part of the fund might be raised by 
special subscription or by the aid of entertainments. 

Set a day for opening the kindergarten, and if pos- 
sible have every plan made before you start the sub- 
scription list, so that you may know what you can 
promise the parents in return for their money. 

It would be well for the kindergartner who is to 
take charge to know all the workings of the board and 



WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 207 

render all possible assistance, for as a rule the latter 
do not understand all sides of the kindergarten ques- 
tion. 

This is the general outline of a plan that has been 
found very successful. The stronger and more com- 
pact the working body, the more ardent your visiting 
committee, the better results will be secured in the 
neighborhood. It would be a very happy thing to 
have some person or persons of influence occasionally 
give a public talk — perhaps the ministers from the pul- 
pits. Have all the good arguments that can possibly 
be used go along with the circulation of the sub- 
scription paper and the membership list. Most im- 
portant and necessary of all, engage the most spiritual 
and illuminated kindergartner that can possibly be 
found. Search for her long and well, if necessary, for 
she will make all your efforts succeed and make each 
following year a greater success. And when you have 
secured for your neighborhood this supreme gift — the 
presence of a true kindergartner — do stand by her and 
support her and work with her and learn of her. 

When once you take up this movement and work to 
organize and support it for the salvation of the chil- 
dren, you will be led into the broadest channels of 
thought and be ready to follow the children of your 
entire neighborhood into their larger experiences. 

Tolstoi gives us a beautiful picture of the real 



208 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

mother who is working formatively and who will ever 
be excused from entering the ranks of "reformers" 
and yet be an eternal example and ideal for every 
woman to follow. It is taken from the last chapters 
of "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth," in the part called 
"What must we do then?" He says: 

"A true mother, who really knows God's law, will 
prepare her children for the fulfillment of it. For 
such a mother to see her child overfed, delicate, over- 
dressed, will be a suffering, because all this, she 
knows, will hinder it in the fulfillment of God's law, 
experienced by herself. Such a woman will not teach 
that which will give her son or daughter the possi- 
bility of delivering themselves from labor, but that 
which will help them to bear the labor of life. 

"She will not want to ask what to teach her children, 
or for what to prepare them, knowing what it is and in 
what consists the mission of men, and consequently 
knowing what to teach her children, and for what to 
prepare them. Such a woman will not only discour- 
age her husband from false, sham labor, the only aim 
of which is to profit by other people's work, but will 
view with disgust and dread an activity that will serve 
as a double temptation for her children. Such a 
woman will not choose her daughter's husband accord- 
ing to the whiteness of his hands and the refinement 
of his manners, but, knowing thoroughly what is labor 



WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 209 

and what deceit, will always and everywhere, begin- 
ning with her husband, respect and appreciate men, 
will claim from them true labor and will scorn that 
false, sham labor which has for its aim the delivering 
of oneself from true labor. 

''Such a mother will bring forth and nurse her chil- 
dren herself, and, above all things else, will feed and 
provide for them, will work for them, wash and teach 
them, will sleep and talk with them, because she makes 
that her life work. She will exercise in them the same 
capacity of self-sacrificing fulfillment of God's will 
which she knows in herself — the capacity for bearing 
labor, because she knows that only in that lie the se- 
curity and welfare of life. Such a mother will not 
have to ask others what is her duty; she will know 
everything beforehand, and will fear nothing. 

''If there can be doubts for a man or for a childless 
woman about the way to fulfill God's will, for a mother 
that way is firmly and clearly drawn; and if she fulfills 
it humbly, with a simple heart, standing on the highest 
point of good, which it is only given to a human being 
to attain, she becomes the guiding star for all men, 
tending to the same good." 

In concluding this chapter I wish to urge my mother 
friends who desire to work for the true forming of life, 
to join in a compact with me to which we shall forever 
firmly hold ourselves. That we shall search to give 



210 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

our children truths through living them out with them; 
that we shall govern ourselves first and our children 
afterwards; that we shall hold inviolate the original 
perfection of the child; that we shall look upon the 
body as the temple of the holy spirit; that we shall 
work to keep the child free for the full enjoyment of 
all his activities; that we shall see in childhood every- 
where our first opportunity to bring heaven on earth, 
and work definitely to bring it to its fullness. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 



**It would prove a boon to our children, and a bless- 
ing to coming generations, if we could but come to see 
that we possess a great oppressive load of extraneous 
and merely external information and culture; that we 
foolishly seek to increase this from day to day; and that 
we are very poor in inner knowledge, in information 
evolved from our own soul and grown up with it." — 
Froebel. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 

Science, education, art, social life, philanthropy and 
economics, each has its kingdom and its rulers and its 
laws ; but motherhood, that underlies and overshadows 
everything, has been given the least thought in all that 
occupies the life of the race. So it is time that they 
who enter its sacred orders should know the greatness 
of their inheritance and the value of its possibilities. 

If one is willing to grant it, mothers rank both as 

laboring and as professional women. You all know 

the old saying, "A woman's work is never done;" and 

it needs quite as much careful forethought and previous 

culture to make a thoroughly good mother as it takes 

to make a school mistress, a lawyer, or to fit one for 

any profession. Of course there are quacks in every 

line of work, but, examined from almost any standpoint, 

we are obliged to confess that the field of motherhood 

is more than overstocked with a species of claimants 

to the worthiest spheres, who have not taken the first 

degree of excellence either in head or heart culture, 

although perhaps they may be rendering very good 

service with their hands. 

213 



214 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

In some parts of the old country one must have 
papers and certificates from the authorities, giving the 
right to carry on a trade or practice a profession of 
even the humblest order, that there may not be turned 
upon a long-sufifering market work that would tend 
to degrade the different lines of product. Even a 
license to marry is made out only after a long and 
wearisome process of paper signing and certifying as to 
fitness, and the whole contract is witnessed over and 
over again by such citizens as are considered in good 
standing. But here in America trades and professions, 
and marriages as well, are all on the same unfirm basis. 
In the latter, illiteracy, deformity, even disease, are no 
drawbacks to entering the sacred relation. Mother- 
hood, the best, highest and holiest calling of women in 
all ages, is the one thing generally regarded as not 
needing any special preparation or cultivation. 

Women who have responded most truly to the de- 
mand for home makers have no more consideration 
shown by those in authority, no higher protection un- 
der the laws, nor any fuller rights in society, than those 
who are careless of their trust, who either through dis- 
position or lack of education allow children to escape 
from their hands to be a public menace. 

When legislation fails to protect a guild or class, 
the members organize for self-protection that they 
may the more forcibly demand their rights. Women 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 215 

are thoroughly organized in perhaps every capacity 
save that which is their highest excuse for being — 
the bringing to the world, again and again, that ''per- 
petual Messiah," and divine reminder of man's original 
purity and the cause of its preservation through life. 
Organizations formed by mothers are usually local, 
limited and short lived, and work for home reforms by 
advocating the establishing of schools where servants 
can be properly trained, thereby lifting household and 
kitchen work from the realm of drudgery to that of 
science, rather than through right methods of cultivat- 
ing the child. Of course there is in all this a fair pros- 
pect of more rest for mothers, together with more time 
for study and recreation, thus making way for the 
higher preparation, both of which are needed if we 
would truly prepare ourselves to be companions and 
guides to our children. 

A mother seldom regards her life work as either a 
profession or a calling, and barely elevates it above a 
mere necessity. Only as she wins standing as a mover 
in society is she recognized, and this is often accom- 
plished at the expense of her children. It is a sad fact 
that those hours of service which have been set aside 
for race-building should be considered of little weight 
in the vast record of the world's doings. Is it any 
wonder, then, that women are struggling to get into 
other lines of work, especially the professional? Only 



216 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

through self-recognition of her mother-work as a 
specialty or a profession will there ever come to 
woman her due recognition from others. Not until 
she demands that motherhood be dignified as a pro- 
fession, that her labor about the foundation of the edi- 
fice of life be inspected, its worth or worthlessness 
tested by humanity, will she have her rights as ruler, 
citizen or servant. This demand, this recognition, can 
only be obtained through organization, and that upon 
the specific basis of child culture. 

What would be the result of an organization of 
mothers for the benefit of self and the race? The 
answer lies in another question: What has been the 
result every time women have seen fit to clasp hands in 
sisterly union and demand or work for anything? Look 
at the suffragists, the temperance workers, the women's 
clubs, and the many other bodies that are sending out 
their great branches and roots into future reform. 

Of what might such an organization, based on 
motherhood, consist? And what would it effect, you 
ask? In the first place it would call together the 
strongest and most intelligent woman-element we have, 
in the interest of the greatest cause it knows. It would 
elevate the mother to a recognition of her true duties, 
and awaken in many an unconscious mind the necessity 
for action in some definite direction for bettering the 
condition of the child right in the family nest. It 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 217 

would open to the uninformed woman a field of inquiry 
of which she heretofore has not been aware, and give 
her tools to work with such as no one can weld for her. 

If there is one idea above another upon which 
women ought to unite it is that of child culture. It is 
quite as essential that a mother give her child its full 
rights to the highest, as that she demand their be- 
stowal upon herself; and a child's highest right is to be 
nobly reared. Should the womanhood of our land, 
with one hand on the heart and the other within the 
warm hand of a sister, take a stand for the perfecting 
of the child life that gathers so closely about its skirts, 
a single generation would leave few battles to be fought 
or victories to be won; 

It will take untiring, individual efifort to bring about 
such organization. It means some intelligent, illu- 
minated woman in each local center, afire with a divine 
inspiration to lift up the family to its proper place 
as the one element of salvation, religiously, socially 
and politically. 

It will mean that each time a motherhood organiza- 
tion is effected, some strong, brave-hearted woman, 
who is true to her own family trust, will have to stand 
for the movement with all her will and heart, and that 
her husband and children will stand with her; that she 
will lift herself up into the heights of the family ideal, 
drawing all her sisters unto her thereby, inspiring them 



218 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

with her own earnestness, and together they will set 
to work to build this bridge over which at least their 
share of humanity shall safely pass into the larger 
land of brotherly love. 

When we have many such brave generals here and 
there, each leading an army of mothers, we will have 
some chance as a nation to get out of our unclean 
ruts, "leaving forever the old, with its unending re- 
formatory movements, and its shattered homes; the 
keystone of that bridge will be Maternal Love, while 
in that fair domain the splendid edifice of the new 
civilization will bear the corner-stone of the Home." 

The future demands that mothers reach out and 
organize. It is the only remedy left with which our 
race may purify itself. We have labor unions, capital 
unions, temperance unions; why not have mothers' 
unions, and work for these eternal results? Mothers 
working in union together will accomplish more for 
our generation than any other class, for the mother 
is the teacher, the minister, the healer, the guide and 
philosopher to her children. 

Tolstoi writes as follows: "The ideal woman, in my 
opinion, is the one who, appropriating the highest 
view of the life of the time in which she lives, yet gives 
herself to her feminine mission — that of bringing forth, 
nursing and educating the greatest possible number of 
children, fitted to work for people, according to the 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 219 

view which she has of Hfe. But in order to appropri- 
ate the highest view of Hfe, I think there is no need 
of visiting lectures ; all that she requires is to read the 
Gospel, and not shut her eyes, her ears, and, most of 
all, her heart." 

Of course, some of the mothers of the past prove 
to us the truth of the words, "there is no need of vis- 
iting lectures"; yet the thoughts that are being given 
out to-day upon these questions are very different 
from the lectures Tolstoi refers to. The doctrines of 
Christ are indeed sufificient to base motherhood upon, 
but it is their spirit which we must strive after, and 
it is that which is being lectured about to-day by the 
true disciples of child culture. 

Some one has said: "When the king comes to a 
home, and places the crown of motherhood upon one, 
who can describe the feelings with which she seems 
to hear the command. Take this child and nurse it 
for me'?" We will all admit that the woman who 
beholds her child as a gift of God can more readily 
read the meanings in Christ's words than the one 
who understands only its physical conditions. And 
with Tolstoi we would all fervently pray that moth- 
ers may take no lower ideals for their guide than the 
Divine Example and Christ's doctrines concerning 
the child and the family. 

Carlyle declares that if we would plant for eternity 



220 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

we must plant into the deep unfathomable depths of 
the heart; and who can so well plant for eternity as 
the presiding spirit at the home altar? But you say 
we must have had preparation to do this. The com- 
mon lines of education do not prepare us for mother- 
hood, nor even to look forward to any such occupa- 
tion as woman's natural place; but instead she has her 
head crammed and her heart starved in the usual 
school. There is scarcely a woman who is not "floored" 
when it comes to bearing and rearing children, no mat- 
ter how well educated she may be, unless she has had 
some preparation of a special nature to fall back on. 
Some one suggests, "The higher branches of book 
learning are well enough for the girl or woman who 
has the inclination or time for them, but they should 
be secondary to the knowledge which shall fit her for 
motherhood. True, she may never marry ; but as one 
of the sex on which the care and education of child- 
hood must rest she should know how with head, heart 
and hand to serve the cause of helpless infancy in any 
emergency." 

Were I asked of what should a woman's proper 
professional preparation for motherhood consist, I 
would say, perhaps, in round words, a course of study 
in a kindergarten training school. But let it be a 
school in which the culture of the intellect will not 
outweigh the culture of the affections and worshipful 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 321 

instincts; one that gives its courses somewhat more 
from the basis of the family than the school, one that 
throws away the letter and national limitations of 
Froebel, and is guided absolutely by the same spirit 
which guided him ; one which is not afraid to progress 
beyond Froebel's consideration of social problems into 
the consideration of the special conditions of the times 
and the neighborhood. 

I love to recommend the kindergarten training for 
a mother, but must confess that I have seen some of 
it that has been detrimental in its effects, and has led 
otherwise sensible women into the mazes of a sense- 
less use of harmful material, soul-and-body paralyzing 
in its effects upon their children. 

If a course of study in a kindergarten training 
school is impossible, there are many good helps now- 
adays of which an intelligent woman may readily avail 
herself. If she can possess the helpful books which 
to-day are in the market, she may acquire much neces- 
sary information and then make herself a small circu- 
lating library to reach out among her sisters who are 
struggling with the question of what to do with their 
children and thus become a blessed promoter of bet- 
ter neighborhood life. If she cannot possess the neces- 
sary books, and lives in a city that has a public library, 
she can usually obtain them there; if the library does 
not already possess them, she might induce the man- 



222 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

agement to put them in stock if the mothers all joined 
her in a petition. If they are in the circulating library 
of your neighborhood, urge the mothers to read them ; 
invite them to your house to read with you ; or if that 
is impossible, carry the book with you on your round 
of calls, and make your friends listen to a few fine 
sentences. Maybe you will be able to rouse enough 
interest to start a mothers' club, and finally a kinder- 
garten. I should have these helpful books if I were 
obliged to "take in washing" to earn the money to 
buy them. I should want to know how to be the 
proper mother for my children, and how best to help my 
neighbors to be good mothers, even if it were neces- 
sary to walk miles, as Abe Lincoln did, for the right 
book to read on the beloved subject. 

But it is not reading alone that makes an enlightened 
mother. She needs freedom of body as well as free- 
dom of mind. The mother who drags herself down 
with heavy skirts, and fatigues herself with pressure 
and weight in dressing up to the styles, is neither a 
proper, buoyant or healthful mother. She is bound to 
be depressed in mind if she is in body, and vice versa. 
A woman who does not dress properly is about as 
poorly equipped for motherhood as any woman can be. 
The principles of correct, simple dressing and living 
are as important to the equipment of a mother as are 
the principles of right thinking. Many excellent plans 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 223 

have been introduced for the correct arrangement of a 
woman's clothing to give the right warmth, freedom 
and beauty; but any woman who is determined to en- 
ter into this freedom can adjust her own clothing ac- 
cording to her emergencies. 

Furthermore, to enter upon the preparation for 
motherhood means that we must ever progress and 
reach higher and for surer results, both in studying 
ourselves and in studying our children. It is no small 
or short-lived calling. It is the only one really upon 
which we enter for life, and with our whole living be- 
ing — body, mind and soul. A woman should take up 
motherhood as she would a professional career, as she 
would take up the most glorious and illustrious calling 
— for that is what it is. The most important work of 
the hour is the illumination of motherhood. That is 
the one work of reform we can each enter into without 
stepping out of our regular path, for on every side we 
find the unilluminated mother working, working ig- 
norantly, and with bad results. 

Any mother who thus takes hold for her own re- 
generation will be inspired to help her mother friends 
and in my work in the Child-Garden I endeavor to 
bring a progressive course of study that can be taken 
up and used as the program for mothers' clubs. 

Child-Garden brings every month an outlined course 
of study for mothers interested in taking up some sys- 



224 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

tematic work in kindergarten methods for the benefit 
of their children. The course began in March, 1897 
(Vol. V, No. 4), and is not only reliable as to quality, 
but quite sufficient for daily needs. 

How to Start a Club. — Let any interested mother in- 
vite a few mother friends to meet with her — only earn- 
est ones — and read over these suggestions with them. 
Propose meeting regularly — weekly, fortnightly or 
monthly — for the study of child culture, along the lines 
laid down in the Child-Garden. 

Make this proposition definite, and decide how often 
to meet, setting the time and place for the next meet- 
ing, or several meetings, in advance, at the different 
homes. 

Let each mother be instructed to help one more into 
the circle by explaining its purpose, and have each 
promise to try and bring this one along. Smaller 
circles might be added in dififerent neighborhoods, with 
union meetings at set intervals. 

Name, Membership and Expense. — Adopt a name for 
your circle and let regularity of attendance constitute 
membership. Let there be no fees, unless they be 
fines for non-attendance. Choose a dififerent member 
to act as leader at each meeting. This plan works well 
in many organizations, and saves complications. 

At an expense of eight and three-fourths cents per 
month each member may possess herself of the full 



PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 225 

course — viz., a yearly Child-Garden subscription at 

$1.00. 

Each member should also buy at least one of the 
special books to be studied for the benefit of all, until 
each can possess them all for herself. 

If you feel the need of having officers and by-laws 
proceed along the regular lines to complete an organi- 
zation. 

Meetings. — Short meetings at short intervals are 
best. The course of study outlined in the magazine is 
long enough to be divided into weekly parts, and one 
hour each week is certainly little enough to devote to 
considering the most important business of a mother's 
life. 

At least one meeting during the month should be 
held in the evening, that the fathers might attend. 
Special topics will be given for such special meeting. 

Determined faithfulness to this course of study will 
at the end of one year bring a wonderful realization of 
good to each mother and her family. 

Program. — The program outlined for each month 
can be divided according to the number of meetings 
to be held regularly, shortening if necessary. 

Every member should be actively interested in each 
meeting. A response from Froebel in answer to the 
roll-call would be an excellent plan. 

A different program committee might serve for each 



226 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

month, to consider the outlined program in the maga- 
zine, and assign special parts to members. 

This course of study can be taken up by any mother 
without cooperation, but of course the best results are 
secured by several working together. 

A short list of books has been carefully chosen to 
be used in connection with this study course, and 
every member should, if possible, possess them. 

Object of the Club. — Aside from the direct good that 
would come to each member of a Child-Garden Moth- 
ers' Club, would be the definite purpose that it make 
itself felt as a power in the community, helping the 
kindergarten work already started, and in starting the 
work if there is none. 



CHAPTER XV. 
WOMAN AND WORK. 



CHAPTER XV. 

WOMAN AND WORK. 

Let US consider what are the self-supporting lines of 
work which at the same time train the woman for 
future wifehood, home-making, and motherhood. 

To-day there is no more vital subject to interest 
fathers and mothers, than what shall be the occupation 
of their daughters. It is growing to be just as much a 
consideration when a girl leaves school as when a boy 
leaves school; she asks, ''What shall I be?" More and 
more women are preparing for professions, and the 
good old days, when daughters began at twelve to 
make the linen which was afterward to be their mar- 
riage portion, are forever past. 

I tremble to think what an honor it is becoming to be 

called an old maid. Which one of us has not been 

guilty of helping some young woman out into the 

greater freedom of self-support, freeing her from the 

necessity of marriage? I confess that I have done 

much mischief along this line, and have helped many 

a woman into rebellion and strong-mindedness. In 

fact, I had been going this sorry gait for some time, 

229 



280 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

breeding discontent wherever I could in the feminine 
heart, until one day I ran up against an old-fashioned 
man who had no patience with such ''social anarchy." 
He set me to thinking as I had never thought before, 
by talking in this manner: 

*'You people who have right ideas about raising 
children ought to be at it, proving your theories. In 
the kindergarten you have ten or twelve little ones for a 
few hours a day, and for a year or two, at most. The 
good you do is largely dissipated in their homes. To 
make a lasting impression on society you ought to have 
ten or twelve of your ozvn and give them your daily 
influence and care for, say, tzvcnty years. Stop talking, 
and get married!" 

This antiquated gentleman's advice, I confess, did 
not fall upon deaf ears. I have, however, not stopped 
advising young women to reach out into the world's 
work. 

In these transition days ideals are hard to realize. 
Women must often bridge over hardships at home, and 
help in the bread struggle. It has grown almost sug- 
gestive of making more unsolvable problems to urge 
women to be mothers of families. It seems absurd to 
say it, but it is a fact that the few large families we have 
nowadays are having a hard time of it. It is often 
financially and socially impossible to rear large families 
unless the women go out and work as well as the men. 



WOMAN AND WORK 231 

And this very fact disqualifies women for motherhood. 
A very small percentage of the human race, as it stands 
to-day, is fit for parentage, either physically or finan- 
cially. 

Among the women a great many who are in the 
ranks should have sought other employment than 
wifehood and motherhood. 

If only women might choose wisely and without 
embarrassment of circumstances or feeling and go into 
that employment for which they feel themselves best 
fitted! A large number of women to-day are working 
from choice. What shall such women be urged to 
choose as their occupation in order that they may not 
lose all ambition to be mothers, nor all fitness for 
motherhood and v/ifehood? 

The great majority to-day do not choose their occu- 
pation; the women whose life conditions are dictated 
— those blessed daughters of labor — they must go out 
and accept drudgery of any sort whatsoever, at any pay, 
in order to help the family. But facts all about us 
prove that they seldom lose their ambition for mar- 
riage and home life. They often accept it in the vain 
hope of relief. This class is more apt, without consid- 
ering fitness, to marry than not, and have families. 

It is the privileged daughter of the well-equipped 
family that we must ask to choose wisely, the woman 
who has education and opportunity, who would have 



232 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

time to prepare herself professionally for social archi- 
tecture. She is the one we look to to-day, the one 
who has the most power in the molding of society. 
Shall she be a grinding business woman, a stenog- 
rapher, a bookkeeper and enter such other occupa- 
tions of the financial world as are undeveloping to the 
inborn feminine instincts? Or even shall she be a 
lawyer or a doctor, spending her time adjusting the 
mistakes of the more ignorant women who have en- 
tered the ranks of motherhood and wifehood? 

She is our saving remnant, this intelligent middle- 
class woman. She it is whose mother before her is 
usually intelligent enough to desire that her daughter 
shall make up for her own mistakes; she it is who more 
and more must and will face the situation, even if it 
seems unromantic and calculating, and prepare herself 
in the highest way for the loveliest and most blessed 
of all occupations — the ministry of the home, the rear- 
ing of children unto Christ, and the blessing of man- 
kind. Nor need marriage necessarily follow such a 
preparation. This daughter, beautifully trained, may 
remain in the ranks as teacher, and there her work is 
great indeed. There she is a link in the great chain 
of motherhood that leads our children step by step 
through their school life. If she be an inspired 
teacher and can pass the child from her hands on into 
the charge of another as fully inspired as she, what 
more can we wish? 



WOMAN AND WORK. 233 

There are many occupations not self-supporting", 
along the line of church, mission and reform work; and 
I might say, club work. The largest body of our more 
intelligent women are keeping themselves busy in this 
way alongside of their home duties. 

Woman has always worked ; woman has always been 
a wife, a mother and a home-maker; but she has not 
always been self-supporting. 

A noted scientist asserts that "the great motive of 
organic nature was to produce human mothers," and 
a writer* adds: "That fact accomplished, nature has 
never made anything since. The work of perfecting 
the human race was delegated to woman, the obliga- 
tions of maternity were made eternal, and her soul was 
filled with insatiate longings for something higher and 
better, so that through these aspirations she should 
herself be led, and should lead man, onward and up- 
ward, toward their joint heritage or immortality." But 
this has not been a particularly remunerative work. 

*Tn the Building of Anthropolgy at the Columbian 
Exposition Prof. Putnam illustrated the life of primi- 
tive woman in such a way as to show conclusively that 
she was the first potter, tanner, and tailor, and, from 
the necessities of her environment, the originator of al- 
most all the industrial arts." But always it was a labor 
of love. 

* Mrs. Sallie S. Gotten, before the National Congress of Mothers, 
held in Washington, February, 1897. 



234 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

''As civilization advanced she employed her time in 
making ornaments for the adornment of man, who 
was at that era the ornamental part of creation. After 
she had originated a way to do these things, man gal- 
lantly assumed the labor." And, by the way, he made 
it pay. 

Woman has since been the more ornamental part 
of creation. "Both having thus served as ornaments 
until developed into higher utility, now another ad- 
vance becomes necessary, and again she must take 
the first step. Now she must devise a way to invest 
him with the mental and moral adornments of a nobler 
manhood, thus repeating on a higher plane the his- 
tory of primitive experience." 

And further, woman must invent a process by which 
she may invest him with these mental and moral adorn- 
ments, for, after all, carry it as far as you will, it is 
her one natural occupation. And further, it ought to 
be a self-supporting occupation. The point of self- 
support is one of the most important, for we know 
how fully developing it is of a woman's sense of ap- 
preciation of what she receives to know what an effort 
it cost some one, and vice versa. 

We find women reaching out into work of every 
kind to-day, even as did her aboriginal sister. Some 
consider it a solution to the woman problem that she 
is at last on an equal footing with men. Others see 



WOMAN AND WORK. 235 

in it the closing of avenues to men, the natural sup- 
porters, and even look upon it as one of the great 
evils of the hour, because it is unfitting women for 
motherhood. 

Tolstoi fights hard for the perfecting of motherhood 
and wifehood as the only true occupation of women. 
However, he does not give us a practical plan of train- 
ing. We might say, perhaps, he left that to be found 
out by the feminine geniuses who have created for us 
the kindergarten training school. Tolstoi proclaims 
against women branching out into professions. Es- 
pecially as a wife, an intelligent wife, does he picture 
woman as a maker of her husband's moral conscious- 
ness. He holds a woman strictly responsible for the 
manner in which she allows her bread and butter to 
be earned. He dares each woman to look into the 
occupation of her children's father, lest she be feed- 
ing them with bread that has been earned at the cost 
of his soul. And, by the way, we may some of us 
well be watching in these days of mercantile specula- 
tions. 

It does not occur to the Russian philosopher that 
unless a woman has launched out into the business 
world somewhat, and knows the ways of commercial 
activity, she may be utterly blind to the point wherein 
her husband's occupation is irregular. 

Tolstoi would have us be spiritual mothers of our 



236 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

husbands, as well as of our children. A modern poet 
has written charmingly of the rights of that "other 
baby," a woman's husband, pleading that he be con- 
sidered with more tender care. 

Surely man has spent his time struggling in the 
mercantile, mechanical and financial world to such an 
extent that he is socially almost a baby still, and it is 
a woman's larger duty to organize for him his social 
existence. Nature herself chose woman for this duty 
when she tied her down with babes to suckle and 
groups of children to hold together and nurture. 
Nature makes w^oman the home builder and the guar- 
dian of the social life of the fathers of the race. And 
we might as well accept the situation and be a suc- 
cess at it. We are all bound to come to it, dear sisters, 
or be blotted out ; and why not definitely plan to make 
of the daughters in our midst mothers indeed, in 
heart and mind! 

Asked what self-supporting occupation will do this 
and make a woman a better wife and mother, I am 
compelled to say, first and broadly, ''Any occupation 
is better than none." A society belle, a reigning 
beauty, whose sole and soulless occupation is the seek- 
ing of a husband, is less fitted for a wife than a girl 
who has had her soul ground down in a factory. An 
idle woman is a curse to mankind. 

That occupation is the best preparation for wife- 



WOMAN AND WORK. 237 

hood which makes a woman most self-reHant, which 
draws most heavily upon her affectionate nature and 
gives her the broadest touch socially. If asked to 
name such an occupation, I should say that teaching 
is perhaps the one which most truly gives a woman 
a chance to live up to her highest opportunities. 

The profession of teacher is the very best among all 
the self-supporting professions. If ideally prepared 
for and ideally practiced it is by far the most develop- 
ing to a woman along the line of her special needs 
as a mother. The more she can put the mother into 
her work, the better teacher, and we might say she 
thereby makes herself, through her far-reaching influ- 
ence, the greater mother. 

If schools were as they should be, and some day 
soon will be, we trust, we will have none too many 
women for our educational ranks. When, instead of 
from fifty to seventy children under one teacher in one 
group, we have twelve children to one teacher, with 
five such groups in each division, then we will treble 
and quadruple the demand for women in this one line 
of w^ork. Surely we will spend more money for school 
salaries, but perhaps we will spend less for reforms. 
You have all heard the remarkable statistics of San 
Francisco since the kindergarten has been generally 
introduced: "Not one child criminal in eight years." 

We all look forward to the day when scores of chil- 



238 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

dren will not be crowded under the care of one teacher. 
And this is not an idle dream, when so practical a body 
as the National Educational Association repeats year 
after year such resolutions as declare that the number 
of children to the teacher shall decrease, and that the 
kindergarten and so-called ''fads'' are a natural part of 
the school course. 

The grand body of this same National Educational 
Association is made up of teachers and superintendents 
from the middle-sized cities of the States. This meafts 
that it is not merely the chosen few, who are thinking, 
but that the whole body educational is either sympa- 
thetic or bound to be influenced in this direction. 
Would it be a wonder if some day we should, instead 
of the cut-and-dried high school (remembering that 
the majority of our high-school students are girls), 
have four years of special preparation for life, such as 
the kindergarten training school would give^ — four 
beautiful years of development of the womanly powers 
of our daughters instead of four crushing years of 
cramming and health sapping, with no special prepara- 
tion for anything at the end of that time! 

Such a training need not do away with many of the 
so-called higher branches, but they would be given 
in the more inspiring way. Spend a few hours in the 
class room of some kindergarten training school and 
see what great subjects are given the young ladies, all 



WOMAN AND WORK. 239 

with a view to applying them to the training of chil- 
dren, and you will question, Why can't we have this 
sort of work in our high schools, and develop our 
daughters for life's duties? Such a plan for higher 
education is already on foot and is already practically 
working. 

It would certainly be a better preparation for the oc- 
cupation of teaching, and this will always be the most 
ideal, self-supporting occupation for women. 

Nor will the millennium be here even when we have 
proper school conditions, with enough fine teachers to 
do the work thoroughly as well as ideally. We will go 
jogging on as a nation, compelled to deal with the next 
big problems that come along, but certainly we will be 
in much better shape to solve them; when instead of 
women lessening the chances of men for positions 
which they are best able to occupy, they will be help- 
ing to make better men to occupy them, not forcing 
upon us more need of emergency work and reform be- 
cause of the greater army of unemployed. 

My advice to any parents with daughters to start 
out in the world, who are not inclined to hurry them 
into marriage, would be to give them a thorough edu- 
cation and give them the training for the profession of 
teaching, whether it be for the kindergarten or the 
grade work. This one profession above all others has 
room on top and least of all interferes with a woman's 
natural tastes and povvcrs. 



240 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Besides, the profession of teaching is one which will 
turn to ashes in the grasp if woman follows it for mere 
self-support, and it will give her the golden crown of a 
rounded life if she follows it as an ideal, fitting her for 
ever and ever higher work and greater returns. And 
the more she makes her work pay ideally as a teacher, 
the more will it pay financially. 

Here is Froebel's ideal of the true teacher: 'This 
standing above life, and yet grasping life and being 
stirred by life, is what makes the genuine educator. 

"Jesus, whom we all from innermost conviction con- 
sider our highest ideal, says: 'Suffer the little chil- 
dren to come unto me, and forbid them not : for of such 
is the kingdom of God.' Is not the meaning of this, 
Forbid them not, for the life given them by their 
heavenly Father still lives in them in its original 
wholeness — its free unfolding is still possible with 
them? Do we not in this, as in all that Jesus says, 
recognize the voice of God? Whom, now, shall the 
educator obey, God or man? And whom, if he could 
do so, shall he deceive, God or man? 

Woman's highest value to society and to the nation 
always will be her capacity to rear children, whether 
it be as mother or as teacher. If she fails to see this 
fact, she fails to find her truest avenue. Yet it is not 
in merely populating the world nor in teaching chil- 
dren that woman really serves best; motherhood is 



WOMAN AND WORK. 241 

necessary for her own development in order that she 
herself may realize the richest type of womanhood. 
And what more worthy gift can she bestow on society? 

Ruskin would have us believe that the highest 
point in the development of the plant is not in the 
seed nor in the fruit, but that the blossom time is the 
ideal. So also it is the flower of womanhood with 
which each one of us should aspire to bless our race, 
and that can be most fully bestowed upon us by 
motherhood. Those among us who may differ and 
point out the beautiful lives of the childless devotees, 
to them I say, ''Beautiful indeed! but think what a 
crown of added beauty were motherhood." It is the 
duty of those women who go the highest, feel the most, 
and think the best, to be mothers. We need not rea- 
son why. 

A wise friend who is a kindergarten trainer said to 
her girls in my presence, "Enter this profession with 
the full feeling that you are taking it for the sake of 
a home of your own, full of little children and a loving 
father to bless, and then you will get the most out 
of it." It is indeed the spirit with which you enter 
any life work that determines how high a preparation 
it shall be for something better. Not the occupation, 
but what you put into it, is what gives the best returns. 

And women once in those broader lines outside the 
mere frivolities of society, are very apt to always keep 



242 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

themselves in touch with some progressive work, even 
after marriage. It is sweet to beHeve that such a 
woman gives her children a greater inheritance and a 
broader sympathy with the world, than the mother 
who pours out her entire life upon her own imme- 
diate family group. 

Mrs. Ballington Booth has given a great assurance 
to mothers who dare lend themselves to the world 
somewhat for the sake of the good they can do to others 
than their own. She says: "I glory in the fact that 
the woman who carries a share of the burdens of the 
world, who goes out on the platform, or speaks from 
the pulpit, or goes to the bar, or stands out for those 
things she thinks right and true, can be a truer, better 
mother in her own home than any other woman." 

And in fact whatever occupation may be yours, dare 
to be old fashioned enough to pursue in it that which 
will most thoroughly perfect you for the complete 
life of a woman. 

Women, let us work, let us work in any and every 
avenue of life, that we may pour into these avenues 
the healing of the race that comes through the pure 
mother. The error of this age is not that women are 
leaving motherhood and have entered every occupa- 
tion, but that there is one single idle woman, neither 
a mother nor a laborer, as a blot on our escutcheon. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
CHILD STUDY. 



*'In every human JDeing, as a member of humanity 
and as a child of God, there Ues and lives humanity 
as a whole. Let a clear picture of their past lives be 
given to children, let them learn to see themselves 
mirrored in it, and when they are grown up the light 
which illumines the way behind them will help them 
to see clearly the road that lies before them; child- 
hood will be seen to be a part of all the rest of Iffe, and 
a distinct conception of the childhood of humanity 
and of its connection with the rest of history will be 
possible." — Froebel. 



CHAPTER XVT. 

CHILD STUDY. 

Tolstoi and a dear old grandmother friend of mine 
believe in common that mothers should study two 
things, their children and the Bible. 

This age has well been called the age of the dis- 
covery of the child. The writer, the painter, the 
teacher, and even the parent, are beginning to recog- 
nize the depth upon depth that hes in the unconscious 
mind and heart of the child, and are studying it that 
they may be true to the beautiful source of humanity 
in all that they do. 

That parents and teachers above all others should 
take up this special study seems but natural. There 
are mothers who for generations back have records 
of the development of their children, although no gen- 
eral use of this suggestion was made by educators 
until recently. To-day every progressive educator in 
the land is alive to the importance above all else of a 
knowledge of the child himself. 

Chauncey P. Colgrove says: "One of the encour- 
aging signs of the present is the fact that teachers are 

245 



246 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

turning their faces childward, are giving more earnest 
attention to the living factor in the problem of edu- 
cation, and to me it is a significant fact that this great 
movement in child study has come so soon after the 
mother instinct and the artist instinct, and through 
women teachers has been utilized in school educa- 
tion. With men and women teachers equally inter- 
ested in the movement, it would seem that child study 
bids fair to become one of the few movements in his- 
tory in which an artistic ideal and a scientific spirit 
have from the first been harmoniously united." 

Certainly nothing concerns a mother so deeply as 
the life and mind of her babies. There is an ever- 
growing sentiment in favor of systematic child study, 
not only on the part of pedagogues, but among parents ; 
and although the acknowledged leaders in the move- 
ment are men, yet the most ardent workers along 
this line are mothers, women teachers, and kinder- 
gartners. Each mother is confronted with this need of 
understanding her children; she feels she must put 
herself on their simple plane, but how to do this sys- 
tematically and truly is a hard point to arrive at. It 
takes in the first place deep insight, great common 
sense, and a proper conception of the individuality 
of each child lest his particular rights be interfered 
with, and above all lest the child be made falsely con- 
scious through being observed and discussed. 



CHILD STUDY. 247 

Mothers who have the deepest welfare of their 
children at heart may perhaps reach into their lives 
most safely; but it is to be urged that they take up 
child study for the benefit of the school as well as the 
home. In studying our children we begin to realize 
what depths lie behind them, how we must not only 
reach back into the lives of our ancestors, but press 
forward even to our grandchildren before we can say 
we have begun to know half the import of the ques- 
tion. Think how each child is one of the myriad trib- 
utaries toward universal good or ill which flows from 
each single family stream! 

The school w^orld to-day is studying the child in 
the mass, but it will always be the mother's particular 
province to study the child as an individual, and it is 
from the mother's standpoint that I shall ask you to 
look at the subject with me. The mother is bound 
to have a larger share of sentiment and affection to 
bring to this study, and I fully beUeve that she has a 
donation to make to child study much as such scien- 
tists as Thoreau and Burroughs had to make to sci- 
ence — a contribution which shall widen and deepen 
the sympathy-side of the question, and ever bring 
us higher and better methods than can be reached 
through laboratory work and the more bloodless dis- 
section and probing which have marked the early 
stages of this study. The mother knows the inner 



248 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

life of her child, his inherited tendencies, his tastes, 
habits, temperament, temptations, aspirations; she 
knows all the facts of his existence; she does not need 
to probe into him to find them out. She has the 
suggestion and the explanation buried in her own 
being. Nor would the natural mother pry into her 
child as the scientific psychologist might. She will 
not question nor urge him to give up his secrets to 
her; she will divine most of them. She will not press 
him to think of certain subjects, nor to do or say cer- 
tain things in order to find out the contents of his 
mind or the method of its action. She will leave him 
untouched and unmolested, and yet she will learn the 
most. 

As mothers we must put ourselves in touch with 
the movement but never give up our special province 
to observe from within; nor must we remove the rose- 
colored glasses of love through which we do our 
observing, for even the most scientific searcher after 
the child is learning that he must don these same 
glasses himself if he would not be led into erroneous 
conclusions. The mother winds about her child's 
life from the very start these wondrous, mystic webs 
that are bound to defeat the material observer who 
would wrench from him his secret. All these things 
must be taken into consideration when we would 
unveil to the child student the real child. 



CHILD STUDY. 249 

The kindergarten advocates the study of wholes, 
and would not have us dissect the parts of a living 
organism. The mother stands in this phase of the 
child study question, and her contribution to the 
movement has great value for this very reason. And 
besides, it is the mother's special privilege to see her 
child in his perfect relation to the whole family and 
toward the environment which has produced him. If 
the child is studied for the sake of finding him in his 
right place, or that we may know what power he is 
capable of and what is standing in his light, who has 
a better opportunity to do this than the mother? 

It is true that the teacher of to-day is taking a more 
vital interest in the child than is the mother, yet she 
cannot do her work as she should without the co- 
operation of the parents. As in every other question, 
child study is after all a question of cooperation if we 
are^to obtain the best results. The mother and teacher 
must work together, and the teachers being already 
alive to this fact, it behooves the mother to widen 
her lines and become an active factor in the move- 
ment. Child study is the peculiar and fundamental 
study of the home builder — the mother — and if the 
home do its duty one half the work of the teacher is 
needless and her efforts may be turned elsewhere and 
to better advantage in guiding the child in his studies 
and into nature. 



250 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

The mother is the one to-day who must be urged to 
reach into this organized movement. The teacher 
and the kindergartner have already done it. A recent 
educational journal says: 

"One of the most hopeful features in the educa- 
tional world is the rapidly growing interest in every 
phase of child study. This interest is shown in in- 
numerable ways — in the formation of child-study 
clubs, in the incorporation of the kindergartens as a 
part of the public school system, in the increasing 
number of those who are fitting themselves for kin- 
dergarten teachers or for the application of kinder- 
garten principles in primary work; also in the forma- 
tion of mothers' and parents' study clubs. The situa- 
tion is a unique one; this interest in the study of chil- 
dren has grown so rapidly and the public schools have 
opened their doors so fast to the kindergarten that the 
supply of teachers is not equal to the demand. Of 
what other department in education can this be said?" 

And if each mother among us will make the start 
we will find the way. Froebel says: 

''Parents should not be timid, should not fear be- 
cause they know nothing themselves and do not know 
how to teach their children. If they desire to know 
something, their ignorance is not the greatest evil. 
Let them imitate the child's example ; let them become 
children with the child, learners with the learner; let 



CHILD STUDY. 251 

them go to father and mother, and with the child be 
taught by Mother Nature and by the fatherly spirit 
of God in nature. The spirit of God and nature will 
guide them." 

But each one of us can begin at home if there is but 
a baby in the house to cooperate in the study. A 
friend of child study makes these happy suggestions: 

"Perhaps the fond mother didn't know she was a 
scientist when she watched carefully to see when first 
the baby 'took notice/ when it first really smiled, when 
it first crept, first stood, first walked, and first spoke. 
But she does watch for all these things, and delights 
to compare her observations with those of other 
mothers, and seeks to draw therefrom the general rule 
in regard to all these things. Nevertheless, what she 
is studying is really a science — the science of baby- 
hood, and it is the most delightful science that the 
mind of woman (or of man either) ever applied itself 
to. The Harvard Annex maid, who, microscope in 
hand, studies the growth and development of a flower, 
can never feel but a faint fraction of the pleasure in 
her subject that the young mother takes in watching 
the development of her baby's body and mind. 

"But while m.ost mothers observe scientifically, they 
confine their observations to a few leading points like 
those above mentioned and usually make no exact 
record of their observations. They knew, at the time, 



252 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

when the baby first laughed out aloud, but a year later 
they could not tell exactly when it was — because the 
baby has done so many more wonderful things. 

"But this very lack of absolutely scientific method 
gives special interest to the case of a mother who used 
her notebook and pencil as well as her eyes and ears. 
And every mother, could she but read them, would be 
delighted with just such observations, scientifically re- 
corded, published in the Child-Study Monthly under 
the title of The First Five Hundred Days of a Child's 
Life,' Mrs. Winfield Hall being the author." 

The method you pursue is of the least importance. 
If you are eager to study the child, and your own chil- 
dren especially, you will surely find a method. The 
best suggestion of all comes from one who has tried it 
— study some other children in connection with your 
own, for it gives greater liberty to both your own mind 
and that of the little ones. And, remember, while you 
study your children you will be learning that deepest 
lesson of all, to know yourself. 'Tt is not only the 
mother's sacred privilege, but her high obligation — 
to know herself in order that she may know her child, 
and the measure of her self-knowledge is the measure 
of her sense of responsibility." 

And, "When a mother in her own home reverently 
studies the threefold nature of her child she will ac- 
quire the truest, finest culture the world can offer, and 



CHILD STUDY. 253 

then knowledge will be added to love, mother- 
patience and gentleness — attributes which transcend 
all learning." 

There are many child-study societies, or Round 
Tables, as they are called. If you live in a large city 
you will undoubtedly be able to associate yourself with 
the work. Perhaps the teachers in your schools are 
following in these lines and you might keep in touch 
with them. Another feasible plan would be to cor- 
respond with the department of University Extension 
of the University of Chicago, which sends out special 
lecturers. If you belong to a woman's club urge that 
they take up this line of study — the one legitimate 
study of women and mothers. If you do not study 
anything else, study your children! 

Last of all, if you cannot get anyone to cooperate 
with you, send to the editor of the Child-Study Monthly , 
Chicago, or to G. Stanley Hall, Worcester, Mass., and 
receive data concerning the work, and go at it alone. 
Every mother ought to join some large movement 
somewhere directly connecting her with the culture 
of her children. Work up a teachers' union and study 
educational methods, or some progressive educational 
magazine. The church perhaps may have some soci- 
eties already formed that could take up such a course. 



CHAPTER XVIL 
A READING COURSE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A READING COURSE. 

There is a constant demand made by mothers for a 
practical course of reading which they can follow at 
home and which will give them deeper insight into 
this many-sided and all-absorbing question, ''Child 
Culture." 

I believe that with an intelligent woman little else 
is necessary save a thorough course of the right read- 
ing and a group of children to live with. And if only she 
will become interested enough in the broader need and 
look beyond her own children, the whole natural work 
of a woman lies in her hands to do. Such a mother 
will reach out actively and aggressively to widen the 
interest of her neighbors; she will work for the estab- 
lishment of kindergartens; she will want to help every 
child to find what she failed to get in her own youth; 
she will feel that she owes it to the cause of childhood 
that she warm everyone within her reach to the living 
truths which Froebel and his followers have given us; 
she will help form the fast growing sentiment and see 
that it be correctly formed; she will use her every op- 

257 



258 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

portiinity with every woman who is not thinking, and 
will make herself a potent factor in this great move- 
ment toward better family and social life, through up- 
lifting the child. 

The first books for any mother to read are the Bible 
and Froebel, because they above all others give the 
spiritual interpretation of the child, and of the race. 
Froebel's most important books to be had in the 
market to-day are as follows: 

"Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel," translated 
and annotated by Emily Michaelis and H. Keatly 
Moore, $1.50. 

This book is most delightful reading and depicts the 
development of Froebel's own mind as he became more 
and more absorbed in the study of the child and right 
methods in education. It is an inspiration to every 
beginner, for it tells of the many obstacles in his way 
and how he overcame them. 

"Education of Man," by Froebel; translated by 
W. N. Kallmann, $1.50. 

A great book indeed is this, ever evolving higher 
and newer light to the student. It is the gist of the 
New Education in one volume. Its contents are: 
Groundwork of the Whole; Man in the Period of 
Earliest Childhood; The Boyhood of Man; Man as a 
Scholar or Pupil; Chief Groups of Subjects of Instruc- 
tion; Connection Between School and Family, and the 



A READING COURSE. 259 

Subjects of Instruction it Implies; Conclusion. Notes 
and comments add to the clearness of the text. No 
commentary on this book is necessary here. Every 
parent should possess it and study it for life. 

"The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich 
Froebel's Mother-Play," by Susan E. Blow and Hen- 
rietta R. Eliot. Cloth, $1.50. 

This volume has been called the mother's Bible, and 
should take its place in every mother's daily reading. 
As W. T. Harris, National Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, says: It is not merely a translation of Froebel's 
Mother-Play, but an attempt to transplant the work 
into English. According to the design of the editor 
this isnhe mothers' volume, and the "Songs and Mu- 
sic" the children's. 

"The Songs and Music of Friedrich Froebel's 
Mother-Play," prepared and arranged by Susan E. 
Blow. Cloth, $1.50. 

While the "Mottoes and Commentaries" are intended 
for the mother, this volume is meant to be the children's 
picture book, while the songs are a valuable collection 
for the home as well as the kindergarten. 

"Froebel's Pedagogics of the Kindergarten," or. 
His Ideas Concerning the Play and Playthings of the 
Child. Edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, 1861. Trans- 
lated by Josephine Jarvis, with introduction by W. T. 
Harris, $1.50. 



260 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

This is a collection of Froebel's miscellaneous es- 
says, which it would be well for all kindergartners to 
study, since here he dwells on the theory of his ideal 
education. He also interprets the first five Gifts and 
their development. The book closes with a story, 
"How Lina Learned to Read and Write." The trans- 
lation is excellent. 

Froebel's life and writings have created a literature, 
and among the most prominent books of this nature 
are the following: 

^'Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel," by Baroness 
von Marenholtz-Bulow. Translated by Mrs. Horace 
Mann, with a sketch of the life of Friedrich Froebel, by 
Emily Shirreff, $1.50. 

''Child and Child-Nature," by Baroness von Maren- 
holtz-Bulow, $1.50. 

One of the first books on kindergarten philosophy. 
Contents: Introductory; Child-Nature; The First Ut- 
terances of the Child; The Requisites of Education in 
General; Early Childhood; Froebel's Method, and 
What is New in It; The Kindergarten; Froebel's "Mut- 
ter und Koselieder"; Earliest Development of the 
Limbs; The Child's First Relations to Nature; The 
Child's First Relations to Mankind; The Child's First 
Relations to God; Conclusion. 

"Symbolic Education," by Susan E. Blow, $1.50. 

This book discusses in a practical way the founda- 



A READING COURSE. 261 

tions of the philosophy of Froebel as found in "The 
Mother-Play and Nursery Songs." It is emphatically 
a book for mothers as well as for teachers, as it gives 
the desired aid and interpretation of the actions, feel- 
ings, and thoughts of infancy, and unfolds the true 
method of training as taught by Froebel. A book long 
waited for by professional kindergartners, and is writ- 
ten from the deepest convictions and highest demon- 
strations of a kindergartner who first showed the pos- 
sibilities of making Froebel's idea practical as a part 
of our educational system. It comes most oppor- 
tunely, and speaks with authority. It is destined to 
become an accompanying text-book to Froebel's 
"Mother-Play" and the "Education of Man." It is for 
use in kindergarten training schools, in mothers' 
classes, and as reference book for public school teach- 
ers looking into the kindergarten. 

"Froebel's Mother-Play Songs," a commentary, by 
Denton J. Snider, $1.25. 

A study of the thoughts and principles underlying 
the play songs, and of the inter-relations between sepa- 
rate songs and groups of songs, also of the connections 
between motto, song and picture, and of Froebel's own 
explanations of the games. 

"Froebel's Educational Laws for All Teachers," by 
James L. Hughes, $1.50. 

This book is a collection of various lectures upon the 
Froebel pedagogy. 



262 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

"A Study of Child-Nature," by Elizabeth Harrison, 
$i.oo. 

Here is given a clear and simple statement of some 
of Froebel's philosophic principles of education, to- 
gether with illustrations of the value of the same to all 
who have to deal with little children. 

'This book is written from the kindergarten stand- 
point by one who has lived for years in loving, con- 
scious contact with children. The author has before 
her mind continually the endeavor to transmute the 
mother's loving guidance from unconscious instinct 
into real, intelligent, acute insight. It is a real contri- 
bution to the science of motherhood, and therefore pre- 
sents the unfolding of the mind and body of the child 
in a more or less systematic, scientific manner. In dis- 
cussing the development of the body Miss Harrison 
presents in a delightful manner both the motor and 
sensory sides. One of the strongest and most sugges- 
tive chapters in the book is that on 'Training the 
Senses.' The psychology of the author is certainly 
sound in that she regards the sense experiences as the 
raw material upon which the higher powers of mind 
must draw in their development. Note this sentence: 
'The one thing that prevents most of us from being 
what we might have been is the dull, stupid way in 
which we have used our senses.' This certainly is the 
keynote of mind-development, and never does it have 



A READING COURSE. 263 

such a clarion ring as when sounded by a practical 
kindergartner like Miss Harrison. 

"In the same suggestive manner the book treats oi 
training the Emotions, Affections, Reason and Will 
The author's insight into child-life is in no place shown 
more clearly than in her treatment of the 'Instinct of 
Justice,' or 'right and wrong punishments.' 

"The book is admirably designed for use as a book 
for studious, careful individual reading by the mother 
and teacher, and will serve equally well as a basis for 
discussion in Mothers' Clubs and Child-Study Round 
Tables. We cheerfully commend it, because it is so 
worthy of commendation." 

"Republic of Childhood," by Kate Douglas Wig- 
gin and Nora A. Smith, in three volumes. Cloth, 
each $1.00. 

Vol. I, Froebel's Gifts. 

Vol. 2, Froebel's Occupations. 

Vol. 3, Kindergarten Principles and Practice. 

These three books give a most complete exposition 
of the theory and use of kindergarten material and 
principles, not only from the pens and lives of these 
two prominent educators, but also giving the best 
thought and ideas on the New Education of the most 
progressive thinkers of the age. 

"Children's Rights," by Kate D. Wiggin, $i.oo. 

This book contains ten fine essays from kindergarten 



264 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

standpoint. Start a club of mothers and use this book. 
Contents: The Rights of the Child; Children's Plays; 
Children's Playthings; What Shall Children Read?; 
Children's Stories; The Relation of the Kindergarten 
to Social Reform; How Shall We Govern Our Chil- 
dren? The Magic of 'Together"; The Relation of the 
Kindergarten to the Public School; Other People's 
Children. 

"The Kindergarten System," by Emily Shirrefif, 

$1.00. 

Principles of Froebel's system are herein given, and 
their bearing on the education of women; also remarks 
on the higher education of women. 

"Kindergarten and Child-Culture Papers," $3.50. 

Papers on Froebel's kindergarten, with sugges- 
tions on principles and methods of child culture in dif- 
ferent countries. Revised edition, published from the 
American Journal of Education. Henry Barnard, 
LL, D., editor. This book covers the whole subject 
of which it treats, and although somewhat expensive, 
it is a profitable investment for any primary school 
teacher. A complete cyclopedia of the kindergarten. 
Its eight hundred pages contain a history of the pioneer 
days of the movement in this country, also many prac- 
tical articles on the life, work and methods of Friedrich 
Froebel. It deals mainly with the theory, and is used 
as a reference book by many kindergarten students. 



A READING COURSE. 265 

The following are some of the most universally read 
educational books, and are used by most schools of 
pedagogy and are recommended for general reading: 

"How Gertrude Teaches Her Children"; An At- 
tempt to help Mothers to Teach their own Children, 
and an Account of the Method. A report to the So- 
ciety of the Friends of Education (Burgdorf). By 
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, $1.50. 

The first complete translation of this important work, 
which embodies Pestalozzi's theories and methods of 
education. 

"Levana, or the Doctrine of Education," by Jean 
Paul Richter, $1.50. 

A classic educational novel. This volume is trans- 
lated from the German, and treats of such matters as 
the importance, spirit and principle of education; in- 
dividuality, music, games of children, etc. 

"Educational Reformers," by R. H. Quick, $1.00. 

Giving a sketch of all the great men who have made 
the child heart and mind their life study. Educators 
and parents should appreciate and read of them, and 
know their demonstrations. 

"Talks on Pedagogy," by Col. F. W. Parker, $1.50. 

The book gives the doctrine of concentration, and 
the outcome of the work done in the Chicago Normal 
School, of which the author is the principal. It is a 
resume of the child in education, its powers and possi- 



266 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

bilities when rightly directed, and flowing sponta- 
neously and actively through the channels of knowing. 
It brings food to the struggling teacher. It is a book 
for parents as well. 

''The First Three Years of Childhood," by B. Perez, 
with an introduction by Prof. Sully, $1.50. 

The eminent English psychologist, Prof. Sully, says 
that Perez combines in a very happy and unusual way 
the different qualifications of a good observer of chil- 
dren, and that he has given us the fullest account yet 
published of the facts of child life. 

Educational History, Method, and Psychology: 

Quick's "Educational Reformers," $1.50. 

Compayre's "History of Education," $1.75. 

Painter's "History of Education," $1.50. 

Gill's "Systems of Education," $1.00. 

Plailmann's "History of Pedagogy," $0,75. 

Laurie's "Life of Comenius," $1.00. 

Krusi's "Life of Pestalozzi," $1.30. 

De Guimps' "Life of Pestalozzi," $1.50. 

Stanley's "Life of Thomas Arnold," $1.00. 

Mrs. Mann's "Life of Horace Mann," $3.00. 

"Life and Education of Laura Bridgman," $1.50. 

Rosmini's "Method in Education," $1.50. 

Rosenkranz's "Philosophy of Education," $1.50. 

Preyer's "Senses and the Will," $1.50. 

Parker's "How to Study Geography," $1.50. 



A READING COURSE. 267 

Adler's "Moral Instruction of Children," $1.50. 

Preyer's "Mental Development in the Child," $1.50. 

The following are among the most useful books to 
kindergartners in their everyday work: 

"Systematic Science Teaching," by Edward G. 
Howe. Part i, a general outline and work of first 
three years, $1.50. 

A manual of inductive elementary work for all in- 
structors in graded and ungraded schools, the kinder- 
garten and the home. 

"Song Stories for the Kindergarten," by the Misses 
Hill. Boards, $1.00; cloth, $1.50. 

The latest and newest collection of exquisite songs 
for every day in the year. Written and adapted by 
practical kindergartners, and tested by actual use in 
kindergarten. A book which will add to the home 
library much of the kindergarten spirit. Contents: 
Opening and Closing Songs; Ring Songs; Prayers; 
Songs of the Seasons; Fall Songs; Thanksgiving 
Songs; Winter Songs; Christmas Songs; Easter Songs; 
Summer Songs; Songs of Night and Day; Weather 
Songs; Industrial Songs; Miscellaneous Songs. 

"In the Child's World," by Emilie Poulsson, author 
of "Finger Plays," $2.00. 

Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. Arranged as a series 
of mornings' talks and stories for a full year. Beau- 
tifully illustrated, printed and bound. A gift book as 



268 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

well as a text-book. A unified collection of the best 
stories, rhymes and suggestions apropos to child life. 

''In Story-Land," by EHzabeth Harrison, $1.25. 

All mothers and teachers will welcome this new vol- 
ume from Miss Harrison's hand. It is a charming 
collection of stories, teaching, by fairy tales and hero 
stories, the lessons of unselfishness, seeing good and 
beauty in all things, sympathy, helpfulness, content- 
ment, perseverance, humility, faithfulness, courage and 
patriotism. Most of the stories are new, but among 
them are "The Vision of Dante," "The Story of Chris- 
topher Columbus," "A Story of Decoration Day," and 
a few others told again for little children. 

"Child's Christ-Tales" (revised edition), by Andrea 
Hofer Proudfoot, $1.00. 

Just as the stories of the Christ-Child are told in the 
kindergarten, giving also the legends of the Christ- 
Child. Illustrated with reproductions from the great- 
est masters. It is full of spiritual significance. Just 
what mothers and kindergartners have long wanted 
to help present the child-life of Christ to children. 
Simple enough for the youngest, and deep enough to 
interest all. With an autograph letter if especially 
requested. 

"Home Occupations for Children," by Katherine 
Beebe, $0.75. 



A READING COURSE. 269 

Very practical for mothers at home, whether their 
children are or are not in kindergarten. 

''Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks," by 
Sara E. Wiltse, $0.75. 

A practical everyday help, as well as a child's story 
book. Outlining a full year's morning talks, show- 
ing the development of true story-telling. 

"Songs for Little Children," by Eleanor Smith, as- 
sisted by Mrs. Alice H. Putnam. Vols, i and 2, each 
$1.25. 

Quality of composition based on child's needs and 
ability as well as musical science. 

"Songs and Games for Little Ones," by Walker and 
Jenks, $2.00. 

Full of adaptable and beautiful songs. A standard 
kindergarten text-book of song and play. 

Child-Garden, a monthly kindergarten magazine 
for young children. Edited by Andrea Hofer Proud- 
foot. Per year, $1.00. 

The only magazine for children gathering up the 
pure current literature of the kindergartens. No 
other children's magazine discriminates so scientifically 
in its choice of contents, having a deep purpose behind 
all that it brings to the child. Full of helps to kinder- 
gartners and mothers. Written by kindergartners 
from their daily experience. "Child- Garden Mothers' 



270 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. 

Club" is a recent department, giving a fully outlined 
course of study for club work. 

''Kindergarten Guide," by Maria Kraus-Boelte and 
John Kraus. Two volumes. Each, paper, $2.00; 
cloth, $2.75. 

An illustrated handbook designed for the self-in- 
struction of kindergartners, mothers, and nurses. A 
most thorough and practical book. With the gifts and 
occupations systematically explained. The fruits of 
years of work. Two volumes, one devoted to the 
gifts and one to occupations. 



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